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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23590444">Stitches in Time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarFlatinum/pseuds/StarFlatinum'>StarFlatinum</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Time Again [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bleach, Doctor Who, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, As N Approaches Infinity Spinoff, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 23:26:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>32,082</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23590444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarFlatinum/pseuds/StarFlatinum</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A loose cannon of a Time Lord, some uncontrollable shinigami, and a bunch of renegade magical girls must combine their time magic, science magic, magic time science, and magic magic to save all those they hold dear.  Also the universe, but that's probably not important.</p><p>Can they pull it off?  Can they save their friends and family?  Almost certainly.  Or at least, they have a better shot at it than basically anyone else.  Can they do this without getting each other killed?  Well…</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akemi Homura &amp; Kaname Madoka, Akemi Homura &amp; Kurosaki Ichigo, Akemi Homura &amp; Kurosaki Karin, Akemi Homura &amp; Kurosaki Yuzu, Akemi Homura &amp; The Doctor's TARDIS, Miki Sayaka &amp; Tsukabishi Tessai, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Sakura Kyouko &amp; The Doctor, Shihouin Yoruichi &amp; Urahara Kisuke, Urahara Kisuke &amp; The Doctor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Time Again [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1699813</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>61</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. A Paradox in the Making</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553727">As N Approaches Infinity</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corisanna/pseuds/Corisanna">Corisanna</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>To clarify something that probably nobody will ever have to ask, this is a crossover of Doctor Who, Bleach, and Madoka Magica, but more specifically, it's a crossover between Doctor Who and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corisanna/pseuds/Corisanna">Corisanna</a>'s crossover between Bleach and Madoka Magica, <em><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553727/chapters/7825376">As N Approaches Infinity</a></em>.  But I have particularly strong opinions on what goes on inside a lot of the Bleach characters' heads, so you get a mix of my interpretation of the canon and my interpretation of Corisanna's interpretation of the canon.  This is what makes it a Doctor Who/Bleach/Madoka Magica crossover and not strictly a DW/ANAI crossover.  I honestly think that distinction is very important, but I can't begin to explain why, so have fun with that.</p><p>My general plans for this work follow.  If you don't want to know, just skip this and start reading chapter 1.  As a very wise person once said: “Spoilers.”</p><ol>
<li>Cram four very perceptive characters in a time machine.</li>
<li>Start a lot of arguments between said characters when said perceptions vary.</li>
<li>Force one of those four characters to play (very ineffective) psychiatrist to the other three so as to preserve some semblance of sanity.</li>
<li>Slowly drive the characters outside the time machine mad as they try to figure out how to save the universe and the characters inside the time machine at the same time.</li>
<li>Somewhat more rapidly drive the characters inside the time machine mad as they try to figure out how to save the universe.</li>
<li>Smash the time machine into the universe so that plot bits spray out (kind of like a particle accelerator).</li>
<li>Resolve everything in an epic battle.</li>
<li>Have everybody live happily ever after, except the characters who die before they can do that.</li>
</ol><p>And that's what's coming.  If you're curious and impatient, now might be a good time to obtain a time machine.  For those of a less hurried disposition: Let the crazy commence.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A familiar face makes an appearance with an unfamiliar object.  Urahara finally gets the beauty sleep he so desperately needs.  And I set up metaphorical bowling pins while cackling like an unholy fusion of the Master and Kurotsuchi Mayuri.</p><p>Writing tired Urahara is so much fun.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tessai had suggested that Kisuke ought to get some sleep.  Actually, so had Benihime.  Actually, those hadn’t been suggestions.</p><p>Kisuke didn’t want to sleep; he was far too busy for such trivialities as basic self-care.  Between damage control planning for Asunaro, lingering bugs in the drone alert system, the Incubator terminals he had yet to dissect, his ongoing forays into gemology, and the open question of Sakura Kyōko, there was no way his mind was going to stop racing.  It was losing the race, too.  There was no chance of resolving all of these issues and cornering the Incubator before the turnback point.</p><p>The ill effects of chronic sleep deprivation wouldn’t follow Kisuke into the next timeline, so why bother sleeping now?  He could spare an hour or three to poke at the dead terminals, at least.</p><p>In his inner world, one of Benihime’s vats came to a boil, reminding Kisuke of why this was a bad idea.  The terminals would wait.</p><p>Just as Kisuke began to drift off, an unearthly din echoed through the shop.  He bolted upright as the grating screech rolled in and out of focus like the most deafening auditory hallucination of all time.  As the depth of the shop and the sound’s reverberating timbre made pinpointing its source nigh impossible, Kisuke headed straight for the control room and glanced over the monitors.</p><p>The camera aimed at the front desk caught his eye immediately.  A blue box maybe three meters tall seemed to have wedged itself behind the desk, and was slowly flashing in and out of transparency with the ebb and flow of the sound.  Kisuke stared for about three seconds, forcing his brain back into gear.  <em>Is that… a police box?  How did it penetrate the wards?</em>  With a deep clang like an enormous gong, the grating noise and the flashing stopped, and Kisuke ran for the front of the shop, nabbing his hat and geta along the way.</p><p>Tessai was already on the scene, hands raised at the ready to cast a defensive kidō, by the time Kisuke arrived.  He'd even turned the lights on, thankfully to a dim setting; Kisuke's eyes had been overly sensitive to light for the past few hours.  Kisuke wasn't surprised that Tessai had picked up on this unmentioned fact; he would have to thank his friend later.</p><p>Shaking his head to physically rid himself of distraction, Kisuke turned to inspect the intruding object.  By now the box appeared quite inert, which was actively concerning.  Something had gotten through the complex wards surrounding the Mitakihara property without triggering any alarms, lodged itself behind the front desk, and was now just… sitting there?  It seemed like someone had gone to an awful lot of trouble to pull this off, and Kisuke would bet his hat that the objective wasn’t to obstruct business with a large physical obstacle.</p><p>Kisuke swept his gaze up and down the box, which was dark blue and possibly a bit shorter than his initial guess of three meters, though not by much.  The mystery object was topped with some sort of lantern, perched atop a squat pyramidal roof.  Each visible side featured the words “POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX” above two glowing windows; each window was divided into six panes.  Kisuke couldn’t see in through the cloudy glass and was reluctant to take the labels at their word, though they agreed with his initial thoughts.  The side pressed against the desk had a set of double doors, one of which bore a white instruction plaque.  This struck Kisuke as a rather awkward orientation, as he could make out the words “PULL TO OPEN” toward the bottom of the plaque; given their very intimate proximity to the desk, those doors would have a rather hard time opening outward.</p><p>As this thought crossed Kisuke's mind, the door with the plaque rattled against furniture.  The timing was nearly comedic, as was the palpable frustration behind the next jolt of movement, but Kisuke’s wariness continued to swell.  There was someone inside the box, but he could sense no reiatsu whatsoever.  Some sort of cloaking mechanism?</p><p>After a few more clunks of wood on wood, the box’s occupant apparently decided that the door had no intention of opening outward and pulled instead.  The box spilled turquoise and orange light around its occupant, who looked down at the desk with something like exasperation.</p><p>Kisuke blinked hard and rubbed the last residue of sleep from his eyes.  Not that there was any, but just in case.</p><p>“Tessai,” Kisuke slowly muttered without diverting his attention from the box and its occupant, “did you drug me?’</p><p>Tessai shook his head.  “Not this time, Boss.”</p><p>Kisuke located Akemi Homura's sleeping reiatsu several rooms away, just to make sure she was still there.  No change.</p><p>He raised an eyebrow at the figure framed in the box’s doorway and opened his mouth to speak, but the target of his scrutiny spoke first.</p><p>“One moment,” Akemi said before retreating into the box and closing the door with a click.  The godawful noise filled the air once more, and the box began to fade in and out of visibility, accompanying the sound with flashes of its lantern.  By the time the box re-solidified, having rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise without any apparent movement, a manic grin had split Kisuke’s face.</p><p>This was <em>new</em>.

</p>
<hr/><p>“One moment,” Homura sighed as she turned away from the furniture that blocked her exit and latched the door shut.  She strode to the center of the room — larger than it had any right or need to be — and began to throw levers, turn dials, and flip toggles with abandon.  She let instinct guide her hands, feeling the flow of time shift and funnel through the glowing central column.  As the glorious roar of temporal engines reached its crescendo, the vortex of chronology beyond the small blue doors fell into step with the rhythmic rise and fall of the column’s light.</p><p>Satisfied, Homura threw one final lever and let the time symphony fade.  She returned to the doors, which now swung outward without resistance, and faced Mr. Tsukabishi and an uncharacteristically speechless Urahara.</p><p>“Mr. Urahara,” Homura prompted the man as he grinned like the idiot he most certainly was not, “I have acquired information and assets that I expect you would like to examine.  Do you want to take a look?”</p><p>The resident mad scientist shook himself out of his gleeful silence.  Which had honestly been rather concerning, especially coupled with the bags under his eyes.  “My, my, Ms. Akemi, what have we here?”  Urahara stepped toward the open doors with only the faintest trace of his early caution.  He peered inside, snapped his fingers, and tilted his head as the echo returned.  “Some sort of dimensional folding technique?  It's very advanced.  Where <em>did</em> you get this?”</p><p>“Boss…” Mr. Tsukabishi warned, his glasses managing to glint in the low light.</p><p>“Don’t worry,” Mr. Urahara said over his shoulder.  “I’m just taking a look, as Ms. Akemi said.  I'll sleep after.”  He stepped halfway into the box and leaned inside, then back out, then inside again.</p><p>Mr. Tsukabishi didn't seem particularly mollified.  Homura was especially concerned when Urahara addressed the doorframe.  “I thought I’d had enough surprises one day, but <em>you</em>~”</p><p>Hadn’t all the surprises been yesterday?  Homura was fairly certain midnight had come and gone.</p><p>Though she needed to bring a number of matters to Urahara’s attention, Homura realized how little she was likely to get out of him in his current state.  “You can sleep in here,” she informed him, grabbing his arm and hauling him the rest of the way past the threshold to head off the sweet nothings he had begun to croon to the woodwork.  Urahara became oddly docile as Homura led him down a side passage and into something approximating a bedroom.</p><p>“Sleep now.  Work later.”  Homura would need Urahara at his best, and they wouldn’t really lose any time.</p><p>“Yes, m’lady,” Mr. Urahara grumbled out with a wan smile and a tone that Homura was sure he hadn’t meant for her.  The man was out cold before his head hit the pillow.</p><p>Homura returned to the console room to fling more levers.  Urahara could get all the rest he needed now.  The events set to befall Mitakihara could be postponed more or less indefinitely.</p><p>As the timeship lurched off into the vortex, a flare of hope bloomed unbidden in Homura's chest.</p>
<hr/><p>Tessai cast a hasty Geki at the figure that darted toward the box, but surprise and fatigue slowed his reflexes.  Two flashes of red reached the doors almost simultaneously; the first slipped inside the box and shut the doors an instant before the second, Tessai’s chantless kidō, splashed off the blue-painted wood like a water balloon hitting concrete.  Tessai hesitated; wood didn’t usually do that to kidō.</p><p>That hesitation lasted a fraction of a second too long.  The box roared to life again, fading from reality with its grating screeches and flashing blue lights.</p><p>This time without delay, Tessai pulled his Soul Phone from his pocket and speed dialed Kisuke.  There was no signal, no connection.  He tried again, to no avail.</p><p>Kisuke and Ms. Akemi were gone, and Tessai had no way of informing them of their stowaway.  He turned toward the hall.  Perhaps the other Akemi, still sound asleep with the rest of the teenagers, would be able to provide some answers.</p>
<hr/><p>Kisuke woke with a jolt.  And that accursed <em>noise</em>.</p><p>Space in here — the box, Kisuke recalled — was so hopelessly distorted that he had no way of following Akemi by her reiatsu signature.  But he had rested now, and his mind was ravenous.  He wanted information.  Needed it.</p><p>So Kisuke lurched out of the bed into which he had no recollection of lying down, out a door that opened at his approach, and followed the noise.</p><p>It didn’t get louder; in fact, the cacophony faded to an almost soothing whir of unknown machinery, and Kisuke thought for a moment that he was going the wrong way.  But only for a moment: he’d only rounded three corners and passed through a second doorway before he caught sight of the hardware that seemed to be producing the sound.</p><p>And Ms. Akemi, who slumbered at the controls.</p><p>How oddly convenient.  Kisuke paused, noticed a ripple in space that leveled itself out as soon as he focused on it, and started to develop a hypothesis.  In the interest of scientific curiosity and caution (but mostly the former), Kisuke stepped into his inner world as far as possible without physically toppling over.  The floor was still trembling; he didn’t want to risk a fall if another jolt came his way.  He absently noted the texture of the wall he chose as a support: smooth, metallic, and very slightly oxidized.</p><p>Kisuke found his zanpakutō spirit examining a narrow strip of cloth laid across the floor.  She didn’t glance up at his approach; neither did she bend or kneel to more closely inspect the weave.</p><p>“That's not ours,” Kisuke noted of the fabric.</p><p>Benihime finally looked at him.  “Clearly not,” she agreed with a half smile.</p><p>“Why didn't you tell me?”</p><p>“I thought you would want to notice for yourself.”</p><p>Kisuke didn't need anything more to understand that his sword spirit considered the cloth harmless, but it was still a foreign object in his soul.  That alone should be alarming, or at least fascinating.  Indeed, he appreciated being able to discover this rather than receive an alert, even if technically it would have been him alerting himself.</p><p>No alert, though.  No hint of tension in Benihime’s posture or the link of their soul.  Though Benihime’s posture was always impeccable, so that wasn’t a great indicator of anything.  Fascinating rather than alarming, then.</p><p>Kisuke squatted and slipped a hand under the cloth.  Lifting it, he found a dizzyingly complex pattern of fine, iridescent threads that seemed to shift under his scrutiny.  More than that: the pattern actually did shift, colors flowing between adjacent threads to render a clearer, more sensible arrangement of hues around his point of focus.  Kisuke stared harder; the pattern sorted itself again.</p><p>“This is what brought us to Akemi, isn't it.”  Kisuke wasn't asking, but Benihime nodded anyway.</p><p>At first the shimmering lines and hues had seemed to imply some sort of perception-altering kidō, but closer examination revealed something much subtler.  The fabric was almost a computer program woven of reishi, a parser of intentions that fed into… what?</p><p>In something of a daze, Kisuke left his inner world without another word to Benihime.  The sword spirit took no offense; she was a part of him, his fascination hers.  The fabric was nigh undetectable outside of Kisuke’s soul, but what he could discern strained the limits of credulity.  The cloth wove in and out of space itself, forming the path from Kisuke to his intended destination as if woven from pure, condensed dimensions.</p><p><em>Somebody took string theory a bit too literally,</em> Kisuke thought in Benihime's direction.  He got a dry chuckle in return.</p><p>Following the cloth into the large room ahead, down some eight or so stairs, Kisuke noted that the ribbon draped gently over Ms. Akemi’s shoulders, doubled back, and came under her head, which rested on a panel of switches.  The same ephemeral ribbon that had bridged space to bring Kisuke here seemed to be protecting Akemi’s face from the hard and probably uncomfortable switches, which would probably leave a series of marks across her cheek otherwise.</p><p>The ribbon.  Made of reishi.</p><p>Which fed into the tall column in the center of the room.  Which thrummed with the rise and fall of its glow.  Which was joined by countless other such ribbons that branched out in all directions, weaving lazy paths into infinity.</p><p>Which really, <em>really</em> resembled spirit ribbons.</p><p>Was this entire place alive?</p><p>Kisuke felt some of the color leave his face.  Could he really trust that this ribbon through his soul was as harmless as it appeared?  It had responded to his attention by presenting him with a simplified, comprehensible pattern.  To help him understand?  To obfuscate the finer details of the more complex original pattern?  To condescend to him through some form of sentient will?</p><p>The ribbon withdrew from his mind, not abruptly, but with enough suddenness to somehow convey an impression of offense.  Like this whole place prickled at the very notion that it might somehow be deceiving him.  Kisuke got the distinct impression of a superior officer who tried to hide his hurt at a student who doubted his heartfelt advice.  Tried and failed.</p><p><em>This place has a personality,</em> Benihime marvelled.  <em>What master weaver could have created this?</em></p><p>Kisuke took half a step forward, intending to rouse Akemi, then paused to really take in his surroundings.  He’d been too enraptured by the obvious wonder of the spirit ribbon.  Sloppy.</p><p>The room was laid out organically around a hexagonal central console.  A translucent column formed the console’s centerpiece; the many ribbons that fed through and from it, though each nearly invisible, practically hid the bobbing assemblage of glowing spheres within.  The column extended below the central floor, which was comprised of many panes of glass divided into geometric shapes by seemingly random, yet oddly orderly, metal beams.  The column seemed to be lit from below and flooded the room with aquamarine or turquoise light.  This glow complemented the mixed auburn, coral, and apricot oranges emanating from the ovoid recesses and curves of the walls.  The whole room felt like a fusion of naturally grown and geometrically engineered, from the arrangement of mostly analog controls on the console to the railings surrounding the glass platform to the white doors to the right— no, scratch that.  The doors didn’t match.  File that away for later.</p><p>No sooner had Kisuke finished his step toward Akemi than a deep, distant chime sounded from far below the console.  Akemi woke with a start.</p><p>She always woke with a start, but this one was smaller than usual.  File that away, too.  This whole situation was much too mentally stimulating.</p><p>Ms. Akemi turned to face Kisuke; she looked better rested than he'd ever seen her.  Judging by her expression, she might have been thinking the same of him, but she merely said, “Mr. Urahara.  Excellent timing.  Please pull that lever and then hold onto something.”</p><p>Her confidence was disarming.  This wasn’t the confidence of repeated experience; it sounded somehow more innate, and she hadn’t mentioned anything like this from her past timelines at any rate.  It also wasn’t the front she put up to keep others at arm’s length, to hide her vulnerability.  This, suddenly and inexplicably, was Akemi in her element.</p><p>So thrown was Kisuke by this abnormally balanced and well-adjusted Akemi Homura that he instinctively obeyed, following her gaze to a lever on the far side of the console and yanking it vigorously as she twirled a dial to the right and fingered a switch without looking.  He almost forgot to follow the second half of her instructions in his bewilderment; just in time, he grabbed the console panel by its corners.</p><p>The next jolt nearly knocked Kisuke from his gigai.</p><p>“Bounced off, again,” Akemi lamented in a tone Kisuke knew too well.  He’d borne that tone on many an occasion, when a plan went wrong and his most viable backup plan was going to be absolutely no fun at all.</p><p>Moments later, a voice emerged from the hall Kisuke had just exited.  “What the hell was that?”</p><p>Kisuke and Akemi turned in unison to stare at Sakura Kyōko as she emerged from the doorway.  Sakura stared back.  Kisuke turned back toward Akemi, who appeared quite as surprised as he was, then eyed Sakura sidelong.  Sakura looked defiant, then defensive.</p><p>“What?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Oh yeah, so I originally started posting this on the ANAI Discord.  Updates will slow down a lot after chapter 5 because I write sporadically and the world is broken.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Kisuke Gets New Toys; Kyōko Gets Pocky</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>And you get exposition!  Not too much though.  Too much exposition is about as healthy as too much pocky.</p><p>I’m going to take a few liberties with Homura’s powers; they should be pretty minor.  Mostly.</p><p>You’re not reassured, are you.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kyōko had risen to the thundering screech with the sole intention of finding its source and shutting it the fuck up.  How could everyone else sleep through something like that?  But the sight of Ass Clown’s dumbstruck face gave her pause.  (If Kyōko hadn’t stopped to put on her boots, she probably would have run into him in the hallway.)  Enough pause to see a glowing depth within this weird blue box, enough to wonder how Homura had ended up inside the box, but not enough to consider that jumping in the box herself might not be the smartest idea in the world.  Tessai shouted something, but by this point Kyōko was already in the box as well.  She darted to the left, behind some sort of diagonal orange wall with hexagon holes in it, just in time to hide from Homura, who came running out of a side passage to flail at some mismatched controls in the middle of the room.  The noise started up again and the floor bucked like a rodeo bull.</p><p>Kyōko went exploring as soon as she'd made sure Homura was completely focused on the control panels.  She started down the hall Homura had come out of, trying to build a mental map of the branching corridors and failing miserably.  She knew she was lost within fifteen minutes.</p><p>Lost in a maze with no exit in sight.  And no food.</p><p>The next door revealed a refrigerator containing leftover Chinese takeout, half of a pastrami sandwich, and an almost-full carton of orange juice.  Okay.</p><p>One sandwich and a box of chow mein later, Kyōko resumed her exploration with only the slightest sense of urgency.  Panicking wouldn’t help, and starvation wasn’t a concern for now.  But after several hours of wandering up and down kilometers of hallways that all looked the damned same, panic began to look more and more appealing.  So Kyōko was relieved when she heard the annoying grinding sound that led her back to the hall she’d initially entered, to the room with the controls and the glowing column and Akemi Homura.</p><p>A gut-wrenching lurch threw Kyōko off balance as she surveyed the room.  “What the hell was that?” dropped out of her mouth without permission.</p><p>Homura and Urahara, the latter of whom looked equally rattled, stared at Kyōko like she'd morphed into a space alien or something.  A sort of stare which <em>would</em> have been pretty offensive, but she'd snuck in, so some surprise was to be expected.</p><p>Still.  Refusing to break eye contact with Urahara, whose stare seemed even ruder now that he was looking out of the corner of one narrowed eye, Kyōko decided to just act like she was supposed to be there.  “What?”</p><p>Urahara dropped a phone from his sleeve to his palm, eyed it suspiciously, and probably wondered how nobody had called or texted him to let him know that Kyōko was gone.  Which would actually be a good question; she was still under watch, right?  But Urahara apparently didn’t dwell on it; in an instant his face bore a way-too-punchable grin and his phone was replaced by an unfolded fan.</p><p>“Why, good morning, Ms. Sakura!  How nice of you to join us.”</p><p>“Sure.”  Kyōko was more than a little disturbed by how easily she took the clown's antics in stride.  She turned her attention to Homura, who would be almost definitely more reasonable, if not more forthcoming.  “What's going on, what is this place, and like I said earlier, <em>what the hell was that</em>?”</p><p>Urahara’s eyes also slid toward Homura.  By the look on his face, he was as lost as Kyōko.  Hmmm.</p><p>Homura neutrally bore their scrutiny for a solid two seconds, then sighed.  “I obtained a time machine.  This place is its control room.  And <em>that</em> was us hitting a knot in time and bouncing off.”</p><p>Kyōko took a moment to absorb this.  She was skeptical of the whole time machine thing, but maybe it was too soon to call bullshit on this one.  At least aloud.  So she waited for Urahara to say something.</p><p>Urahara did not disappoint.  “That would explain the warping at the threshold specifically, and how you were both in here and out there,” waving his fan at the pair of doors to the right, “which doesn’t match certain, ah, known aspects of your power.”  He glanced at Kyōko, then back to Homura.  Great: another one of those things that needed explaining.  “But you’ve yet to answer <em>my</em> question.”</p><p>Homura pondered for a moment.  “Which question?”</p><p>“The one I asked upon entering, of course: where did you get this?”</p><p>“I stole it.”</p><p>Urahara’s face was perfectly blank in a way that suggested he was still waiting for an answer.  “From?” he prodded after a second.</p><p>“Some ridiculous foreigner,” Homura replied casually, like stealing a time machine was totally routine.</p><p>“When was this?” Urahara asked, eyebrows askew.  “Which timeline?”</p><p>Timeline.  Urahara was clued in on time travel, but not the alleged time machine itself?  Weird.</p><p>A pained expression flitted across Homura's face.  “Irrelevant.”  Urahara visibly reined in his curiosity.  He was respecting boundaries now?  Kyōko wondered at the clown's sharp uptick in emotional intelligence.</p><p>If Urahara wasn’t going to push for explanations, Kyōko would.  She'd been promised explanations, and now seemed like a good time.  Or maybe she was just getting tired of people stringing her along with the bare minimum of information.  Yeah, probably that.</p><p>“Now that you’re not busy putting out actual fires, how about you fill me in on your organization and the time shenanigans and all the other crap you’ve been ducking around?”  Kyōko realized that her voice sounded about twice as confrontational as she’d meant, but she really was fed up with not being in the know.  “If this is a literal time machine, then neither of you has an excuse to be somewhere else.”</p><p>“Much of the information that we’ve withheld from you pertains to Ms. Akemi's circumstances,” Urahara said smoothly.  “How much will be revealed remains her decision.”</p><p>So he was going to push after all.  Kyōko had given the manipulative asshat an excuse to fish for whatever info he didn’t have, without explicitly revealing what he did or didn’t already know.</p><p>Homura placed her hands on the edges of the console in front of her and glared daggers at Urahara.  Her fingers were very slightly trembling.  From frustration, because she knew what he was doing, or because of whatever the explanation was going to be?  Urahara met her glare without flinching, which honestly was really fucking impressive.</p><p>After a solid eight seconds of death stare, Homura stepped back from the console and leaned on the railing.  She suddenly looked exhausted, and ten years older.  “You already know that I can stop time,” she uttered, meeting Kyōko's eyes for a long moment.  “That is not the extent of my power.”</p><p>This sounded like the beginning of an evasion, but it could still be an explanation and Kyōko was not going to ruin it by pressing too hard.  She waited for Homura to continue.</p><p>“You will have difficulty believing this, but I can also… rewind time.  Under certain conditions.”</p><p>Well, shit.  That did explain some of Urahara's reactions earlier, but…</p><p>“If you can time travel already, what's the time machine for?”  Kyōko tried to hold her questions for the end, but one got out anyway.  Maybe she could play it off like that was her only doubt?</p><p>Homura frowned.  “My personal time travel is very specific.  I can turn back time by six weeks — originally from May first to March sixteenth — and after doing so, I must wait six weeks before doing so again.”</p><p>“So if you miss the turnback point, you can still rewind, but to a point later than March sixteenth?” Urahara interjected.</p><p>Homura nodded.  “I learned this the hard way,” she murmured, then glared at Urahara again.  The clown was running his hands all over the console, lightly fingering various controls and cables.  “Don’t touch that,” Homura snapped as Urahara's hand approached what looked like an entire typewriter embedded in the control panel.  Urahara drew back his hand and whistled innocently; Homura resumed her explanation.</p><p>“When I reset, everything that happened in the intervening six weeks is undone, but I retain anything stored in my shield.”  She met Kyōko's eyes again, lingering longer this time, and headed off the next few questions in one go.  “I know this is difficult to believe, but you have already begun to put the pieces together.  Urahara recognizes me as a co-equal leader of our resistance because of my extensive, repeated experience.  I had your favorite flavor of pocky on hand when you woke because I’ve met you before.  Dozens of times.”  She reached into her shield and pulled out a packet of said pocky, waving it at Kyōko like something between a visual aid and an offering of appeasement.  “I have knowledge of the Incubator's system and future threats because I have witnessed them and returned to prevent my… friends… from dying.”  Each of Homura’s words made the air feel a little heavier.  “I am tired of seeing you die.”</p><p>The chow mein from earlier <em>really</em> wanted to make a comeback.  Swallowing hard and inspecting the cracks in Homura’s façade of calm, Kyōko could only say, “You really expect me to believe that?”</p><p>The façade crumbled.  Homura's eyes grew damp.  “Yes.”</p><p>Kyōko numbly grabbed the pocky.</p>
<hr/><p>This time around, Kisuke made sure nobody was paying attention to him before he explored the console.  Such a bizarre array of technologies, mismatched yet harmonious.  He couldn’t help himself, even as Akemi dropped bombshell after bombshell.</p><p>Her words weren’t the interesting part.  After the bit about the six-week limit, Akemi said nothing Kisuke didn’t already know.  But the way she said it spoke volumes.  In particular, her delivery of the dreaded explanation conveyed surprisingly few hints of trauma.  She hadn’t even begun to shut out her surroundings until after she’d brought the pocky out.  She wasn’t hurting any less, but she’d clearly had a long time to learn to better hide the hurt.</p><p>How long?  How many timelines?</p><p>While Kisuke’s mind dwelt on the time traveller’s mental state and coping mechanisms, his hands had a bit of an adventure.  He found levers, cranks, buttons and switches old and new, coaxial cables, simple copper wires, optical fibers… and something hooked in the cables beneath the panels.</p><p>Carefully, surreptitiously, Kisuke removed the object from its wiry snare.  It was just under thirty centimeters long, a mixture of copper and some kind of aluminum alloy, with a grip of black leather and white vulcanized polymer.  In the middle and at one end were set two teal crystals; the one in the middle was surrounded by bronze tines, while the end featured four steel claws that surrounded the bluish-green bauble.  Kisuke thought he could see small electrical components inside: thin wires, a tiny diode, a high-frequency antenna, even a minuscule piezoelectric motor?  On the other end, the end with the grip, was a hinged bronze end cap; flipping it open, Kisuke found a little red button.  He tugged at the object thoughtfully and noted that the clawed end could slide down to obscure the middle crystal.  He slid the end in and back out a few times, twiddled the claws, fingered the red button, and contemplated the object as a whole.  The device’s structure gave him few hints of its function.</p><p>Kisuke looked up at the room’s central column, then back at the crystals, and considered their matching hue.  He stopped running his fingers over the object in his hands and instead felt across its features with his mind.  Sure enough, a now-familiar ribbon-like structure of reishi resided in the central crystal, translucent almost to the point of invisibility but delightfully responsive.  It was much simpler than the ribbons from the column, didn't bear any marks of awareness, but it was clearly of the same kind.  Even in its relative simplicity, it was marvellous.</p><p>Resisting the urge to coo at the device and risk derailing the two magical girls’ conversation before it got to the really interesting bits, Kisuke put the claws into a closed configuration and gently poked the device with his reiatsu.  A soft trill rewarded his efforts.  More boldly, running on the instinct common to mad tinkers everywhere, Kisuke pulled the end out to reveal what seemed like an appropriate amount of teal, pushed more reishi into the crystal, and vigorously thumbed the red button.</p><p>Mere seconds after Akemi's whispered “yes,” a whirring sound snapped the girls out of their budding rapport.  They turned to stare at the item in Kisuke's hands, regarding its green glow and increasingly shrill buzz with considerable alarm.</p><p>Kisuke met Akemi's eyes and cringed.  The girls had been having a moment, something of possibly critical importance for their ongoing stability.  “Oops.”</p><p><em>Oops indeed,</em> Benihime contributed.  <em>Do you plan to make a habit of embedding your shuttle in the weft?  You cannot claim fatigue this time.</em></p><p>There was nothing Kisuke could say to that.  Not while trying to figure out how to shut the device off, anyhow.  He pressed the button again, slid and twisted the glowing end, and gave the crystal core a few solid whacks with his reiatsu to no discernible effect.</p><p>Upon reaching a steady pitch, the device's sound met and harmonized with a crackling hum that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.  A whoosh of displaced air extinguished both sounds, as a dazzling golden glow materialized two meters in front of Kisuke and formed into the shape of a person.  The glow scattered like the aftermath of a dust explosion, leaving in its place a vaguely European-looking man in suspenders, a bow tie, and a red felt hat.  The man seemed to be prodding a bulky wristwatch with a device similar to, if cruder than, the one Kisuke held.</p><p>The wristwatch sparked and a smell of ozone filled the room, but the man looked quite pleased with himself despite sporting what looked like the beginning of an electrical fire on his arm.  Then he glanced around the room, took in the three sets of eyes staring back, and raised his eyebrows.</p><p>“Oh, good,” he deadpanned, allowing his eyes to settle on Akemi.  “You've multiplied.”</p>
<hr/><p>After a moment’s consideration, the Doctor removed the smouldering remains of the vortex manipulator from his wrist and tossed it on the floor before it had the chance to set his coat on fire.  The blond man with his sonic screwdriver stepped forward quickly, scooped up the discarded wearable time machine with the hook of his cane, and whispered something at it that seemed to put out the fire.  Curious.</p><p>The man sat down on the floor and began to pick the vortex manipulator apart.  At first he clearly had no idea what he was doing, but shortly he seemed to figure something out and proceeded to sort components in front of him.  “How in the world…” he muttered, most likely to himself.</p><p>The Doctor picked this up and ran with it.  “How indeed!  It should be impossible to just transport into a TARDIS like that, but using that vortex manipulator as a temporal signal booster, I managed to create a resonance between two functionally identical sonic devices.  Then I just used a modified transmat to tunnel along the resonance channel, and here I am!”  The Doctor gave a flourish of his arm, shaking little bits of soot into the air.  How he had missed these explanations.</p><p>He remembered why he wasn’t giving them so often these days and could feel his expression drop.  The Doctor needed a distraction, so he surveyed the room.</p><p>The two girls to his left stared openly at him, then met one another's eyes and shrugged.  They clearly hadn’t followed.  The man, however, cracked a grin.  The twinkle in his eye struck the Doctor as oddly familiar.</p><p>“That almost meant something!” the man exclaimed, standing and adjusting his hat so the green stripes lay misaligned with his facial features in a frankly OCD-provoking manner.</p><p>The Doctor bristled, just a little, and arched an eyebrow.  “Almost?  Did my English fail me?”</p><p>“You’re speaking Japanese,” the redheaded girl objected before the blond man could field a response.  The Doctor blinked at her, then peered at the TARDIS console.</p><p>“Right,” he answered her implied question, his eyes saccading across the panels all the while, “you hear me speaking Japanese because the TARDIS translates whatever I say in your head to the language you expect to hear, but I’m actually speaking English because I’ve spent a lot of time with people who speak English and it’s sort of become natural for me.”  He’d actually switched from his native Gallifreyan centuries ago, so he wouldn’t have to think so much about the loads of concepts that wouldn’t translate correctly if he said them in a word, but he left that bit out.  The girl seemed sharp, but she also looked a lot younger than most of his companions had been, so he adjusted his explanation.  Simple, straightforward, but not condescendingly so, because young people hated to be condescended to more than anyone.  The Doctor hoped very hard he'd gotten it right.</p><p>Unpredictably, he’d missed something.  The girl narrowed her eyes and asked, “What’s a TARDIS?”</p><p>The Doctor gestured grandly at his surroundings.  “This is!  That’s what this wondrous vehicle is called.”</p><p>The girl’s eyes stayed narrowed, but her mouth pulled up at the corners.  “And what the hell sort of name is ‘TARDIS’?”</p><p>Swearing.  The Doctor winced, hopefully just internally, and tried to keep his face from approximating that of a man who had bitten into an orange only to discover it was actually a lemon.  He didn’t like the notion of swearing, let alone the object; it was uncouth, usually unnecessary, and it belittled the speaker’s intelligence.  Or masked it, which was more annoying.  Not that the Doctor never played the fool himself (wasn’t playing the fool now), but at least he kept his tongue civil when he did.</p><p>“It’s an acronym,” he answered with forced calm.  “It means ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space’.”</p><p>The black-haired girl looked nonplussed; the blond man went back to dissecting the vortex manipulator with startling proficiency.  The redhead actually laughed, but it was not a pleasant sort of laugh.  “Who named it that?”</p><p>So many questions about the not-important bits.  Well, not objectively important.  “My granddaughter,” the Doctor said wistfully.</p><p>The black-haired girl blinked and spoke up for the first time.  “You’re a grandparent?”  She seemed surprised to have spoken.</p><p>The blond man dragged the conversation back onto the rails, eliciting the Doctor’s silent gratitude.  Some topics were simply too heavy, though definitely-not-clinically-depressing heavy, to share with strangers.  “I presume you are the owner of this TARDIS, then, sir?”  The man removed his hat, bowed, and said, “I am Urahara Kisuke, humble shopkeeper, at your service.”  He straightened, placed his hat back on his head in a distinctly less aggravating position (rotated half a degree clockwise from before), and ignored the redhead’s cry of “Bullshit!”</p><p>The man stepped around the vortex manipulator’s neatly sorted components and offered his hand.  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”</p><p>Clearly the fellow was expecting the Doctor to introduce himself.  Well then.  “Hello, Urahara Kisuke.  I’m the Doctor.”  He lifted his fez with his left hand, made as if to shake Urahara's hand with his right, then whipped his arm forward faster than human reflexes could accommodate, reached for his sonic screwdriver, and… missed?</p><p>Urahara had moved his hand out of the way in the instant before contact.  The Doctor nearly overbalanced in his surprise.  He turned and warily eyed the man, who was inspecting the sonic screwdriver with uncommon intensity.</p><p>The redhead laughed again, sounding downright malicious this time.</p><p>“That’s mine, you know,” the Doctor ground out.  This was the last thing he needed to cap off a Very Bad Week.</p><p>Urahara’s eyes turned slowly from the screwdriver to the Doctor.  “Oh!  Is it?”  The man feigned nonchalance, but the glint in his eyes had hardened.</p><p>“Yes, it is.”  The Doctor was being tested.  He wasn’t sure what for; this man was unusually difficult to read.  But the Doctor did not fail tests.  Unless they were stupid tests, and this one might not be, so there was no point in risking it.  He put on the most conciliatory face he could muster, opened his posture slightly, and said, “May I please have it back?”  He allowed the arm holding his makeshift sonic, the one he'd used on the vortex manipulator, to swing forward slightly and faced his palm toward Urahara.</p><p>Urahara noticed the gesture instantly.  His pupils dilated a fraction.  This was workable.  “Might I propose an exchange,” the Doctor continued, “as a token of friendship?”  He lifted the makeshift sonic toward Urahara.  “That one has… sentimental value,” he added.</p><p>Something he’d said pleased Urahara, who grinned wildly and proffered the sonic screwdriver in his grasp.  “You might indeed,” he replied.</p><p>Neither man released his sonic until he had a firm grip on the other.</p><p>Urahara’s eyes softened into perfect cordiality as he gestured to the girls with a folding fan.  “This,” he indicated of the redhead, “is Sakura Kyōko.  And this is Akemi Homura.  Say hello, girls!”</p><p>Akemi uttered a very polite “Hello” but tossed Urahara a look that the Doctor could only classify as resigned indignation.  Sakura made a rude gesture, probably also at Urahara, though given her attitude thus far it could equally well have been meant for the Doctor, the TARDIS, or all of time and space.  “Hello there!  I’m the Doctor,” the Doctor greeted them redundantly as he pondered their thoroughly irreverent social dynamic.</p><p>Sakura rolled her eyes.  Akemi tentatively asked, “Doctor who?”</p><p>“If you’d like,” the Doctor answered with half a grin.</p><p>Sakura pivoted on her heels to face Akemi and stage-whispered, “Holy shit, now we have two of Urahara.  We're <em>so screwed</em>.”</p><p>The Doctor gestured in the blond man's direction and protested, “But I’m nothing like him!”  He looked belatedly at Urahara, who stood mirroring his posture and had uttered the exact same sentence at the exact same time.  His half grin returned involuntarily.</p><p>The Doctor found himself surprisingly entertained by this whole conversation, but he had to move it forward.  He returned his attention to Akemi.</p>
<hr/><p>Homura braced herself as the Doctor’s wan smile faded once more and his eyes returned to her.  After carelessly drawing his attention, she didn’t expect to be able to deflect whatever he had coming for her, regardless of Kyōko’s distraction.  Fine: the man had every right to be angry.  But he wouldn’t prevent her from doing what she needed to do.  If this Doctor could be baited, he could be worked around; Urahara wasn’t the only trickster in this box.</p><p>Kyōko opened the pocky and began to eat.  She was enjoying this far too much.</p><p>All the plans forming in Homura’s mind came to a crashing halt when the Doctor’s incomplete smile transitioned into not a mask of rage or vindictive spite, nor even of annoyance or triumph, but a full and genuine grin to rival Urahara’s.  This man was mercurial and unpredictable and more than a little frightening.  “Good job!” he exclaimed out of nowhere.</p><p>Homura described the sentiments of the whole room in one word: “What.”</p><p>“Good job!  Well done!  Congratulations,” said the Doctor, waving a hand carelessly at the console.  “Not just anyone can steal a TARDIS, you know.  Even navigating in space, let alone time, is so complex that a human would almost have to grow an extra brain to figure it out!”</p><p>It took every ounce of willpower Homura possessed to not gape openly.  “You’re… not angry?”</p><p>“Of course not.  Well, maybe a teeny bit, but I’m more impressed than anything.  How did you even notice it, anyway?  I had the perception filter set to maximum power, and it doesn’t look like you've touched the setting at all.”  The Doctor began to pace around the room.</p><p>Kyōko mouthed <em>The what filter?</em> around her second pocky stick while Urahara turned to the console.  Homura wondered how much to divulge.  The Doctor didn’t strike her as a complete idiot; she couldn’t tell what portion of his careless eccentric act was just that, but it was probably enough for him to figure out more of her abilities than she would like from whatever information she did give.  Also enough to notice an evasion.  Like Kyōko said: another Urahara.  Great.</p><p>“I detected a local warping of time,” she decided to allow, phrasing her statements to vaguely imply technological means without precluding personal ability.  “I couldn’t pinpoint the warp itself, but the light and sound revealed the exact location of your TARDIS.”</p><p>The Doctor paused in his circuit around the console.  “Detected how?”  He kept talking without waiting for an answer, gesticulating wildly in what appeared to be a demonstration of his inability to keep his hands and feet still at the same time.  “The TARDIS has a subtle enough time signature that it doesn’t usually need masking, but once it’s noticed, that would be enough to bypass the filter if…”  His mumbling trailed off into another question: “So you came, you saw, you… stole it?”</p><p>Homura shrugged.  “I watched you exit and tailed you for a while.  You didn’t seem to be doing anything important, so I took a look and realized that this TARDIS would be useful for my objectives.”  Whether he would ask after her objectives could prove informative.</p><p>The Doctor clapped like an excited child.  “Just like that!  Brilliant!”  He ducked around the railings and under the glass floor, humming and waving his buzzing green light.  He seemed to be done with the conversation, as anything else he said was quite indistinct and appeared to address the mess of wires and electrical components rather than the room’s other three occupants.</p><p>The personality profile Homura had built for the Doctor over the course of this exchange was chaotic and incoherent, but it was clear on one point.  She’d stolen from a madman.  Because of course she had.</p><p>Urahara rubbed his hands together and looked like he was having <em>ideas</em>.  Kyōko, apparently unimpressed, started on her third pocky stick.  And from somewhere deep below, the TARDIS hummed its siren song.</p>
<hr/><p>Akemi had not responded as hoped to the Doctor’s gambit of acting extra approachable.  Nobody had, but particularly not Akemi, who had regarded the Doctor as if he were insane.  Odd.</p><p>Mysteries upon mysteries, really.  The Doctor quite enjoyed solving mysteries.</p><p>As he innocently shifted cables and reassured his TARDIS that he was home, the Doctor gathered certain dangling wires and components.  In contrast to his directionless tinkering and maintenance, the bits and pieces he purposefully arranged would serve a use perhaps less benign.</p><p>Well, not <em>that</em> much less benign; it wasn’t like the Doctor planned to hurt any of his uninvited guests.  Not unless they endangered him and his favourite timeship.  Just some mostly-harmless spying for now.  He did need a distraction from… well, he needed a distraction.</p><p>He socketed a final wire into the mess-within-a-mess he’d created, then waved his sonic screwdriver beneath it all.  After a few seconds or an eternity (it was always hard to tell which), he cocked his head and picked apart the tool’s whistling buzz.</p><p>The Doctor had intended to briefly survey a few passive scans of the three interlopers for some hint of their origins.  But what his screwdriver told him made no sense.  Very exciting, of course, but “briefly” wasn’t about to happen.</p><p>On the surface, Urahara seemed like an ordinary human.  This was, of course, impossible; an ordinary human would never have evaded the Doctor's surprise lunge, backed as it had been by two combined Venusian aikido techniques and the superior conductivity of Time Lord nerves.  Closer inspection showed nonhuman features, yes, but not generally the <em>super</em>human characteristics the Doctor had expected.  Urahara did probably have an accelerated healing factor and better-than average durability, but subtle energy locks hid in key points of his anatomy, actively limiting his speed and strength.  Then what was behind those inhuman reflexes?</p><p>The nearest thing the Doctor had ever seen to this was the effect of a chameleon arch: something modified to be human.  Which would imply that Urahara was not human to begin with.  Another renegade Time Lord?  It would explain the man’s taste in hats, at least.</p><p>The girls were a different story entirely.  They possessed heightened levels of psychic energy, but it didn’t closely follow their central nervous systems as per standard for most vertebrates throughout the universe, nor did it spill out unrestrained as for many innately psychic species.  The energy was instead precisely arrayed around a focus in each girl's hand.  Aside from surmising that this was an artificial phenomenon of some sort, the Doctor had no explanation whatsoever.  Not even a shadow of the beginning of a hint of a clue.</p><p>The Doctor had his distraction.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The Doctor is no stranger to Grand Theft TARDIS, so no hard feelings there.  Plus he’s going to get to explore the overlap between different types of sciencey-doo.  He can figure out how to use this; he’s the Doctor.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Meanwhile (Or Something Like That)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I think I wrote this in late January or early February, which might or might not explain the notes I had:</p>
<p>I might have missed Christmas with this one, but uh, happy Boxing Day, I guess?  Wait, no, um, happy New Year?  Uh… 新年快樂。  Nailed it.</p>
<p>Sometimes I forget that I don’t have a time machine.</p>
<p>On a semi-related note, it’s hard to manage the notion that something is happening at location B <em>while</em> another thing is happening at location A if location A happens to be a time machine.  I’m trying my best, but it’s hard.  Let’s see what our good friend Tessai has to say about it.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tessai had a mental list of his boss’s questionable decisions.  It was not a short list.</p>
<p>Tonight the list got a new entry, near the top.  “Blindly allowed duplicate Akemi to lead him into unidentified object.”  Right below several of the decisions surrounding the Visored incident, but above most of the Winter War ones.  Far below most of the decisions involving Kurotsuchi, so that was something.  Regardless of the great respect and seemingly infinite patience Tessai harbored toward Kisuke, this list was becoming a little too long.</p>
<p>Grimacing inwardly, Tessai made his way to where Akemi slept and elevated his reiatsu slightly.  This was not going to be a pleasant conversation.</p>
<p>Akemi jerked upright at the waist, drowsy panic flashing across her face for the half second it took her to lock eyes with Tessai.  She reined in her expression with all the grace of someone preparing to be informed of the death of a loved one, but in impressive fast-forward; her breath was steady and her face coldly neutral by the time Ms. Kaname rose blearily beside her.</p>
<p>“What happened?” Akemi asked, betraying none of her earlier emotion.  Tessai was, as usual, deeply concerned.  But there was a more pressing issue to discuss.</p>
<p>Tessai, a man of few words at the best of times, realized belatedly that he actually had no idea how to articulate an answer to Akemi’s question.</p>
<p>He settled on “You appear to have abducted the Boss,” which was far from satisfactory, but he would rather have Akemi stare at him like he’d lost his mind than leave her in suspense at three in the morning.</p>
<p>“You wake us up at ass o’clock AM to tell us what?” Miki wondered groggily, and not without irritation, as she switched on the lights.  “Come on, man, you can’t just drop that on us without context.”  She rubbed her eyes and surveyed the newly illuminated room.  “Wait, where’s Kyōko?”</p>
<p>“She went after Akemi and…”  Tessai trailed off as the adults, who had apparently noticed a disturbance, began trickling into the room.  “We should watch the security footage.”  He led the way to the control room and silently congratulated himself on avoiding a whole lot of words.</p><hr/>
<p>When the onscreen Homura half-guided, half-dragged Kisuke into the mysterious box, nobody spoke.  When Kyōko darted in, a few swears filled the dead air of the control room.  When the box pulled its vanishing act, Issin paused to reflect on his sorry excuse for parenting.</p>
<p>By no means did Issin consider himself a good father.  He was well aware of his failure in the wake of Masaki's death, when he left Ichigo to raise the twins and himself.  (Masaki would be ashamed of him.)  He could not deny the shortsightedness of his secretive, hands-off approach to Ichigo's powers.  (Those secrets endangered his son's life too many times to count.)  And he would never forgive himself for missing the fact that his girls had sold their souls to fight a threat he had never noticed.  (How could he be so blind?)</p>
<p>Given this track record, Isshin figured it was only prudent to blame himself for somehow allowing one of his girls to grab Kisuke and vanish into thin air.  He simply needed to work out exactly how this was his fault, and then how to go about fixing it.  Kisuke needed to be <em>here</em>.</p>
<p>Didn’t he?</p>
<p>“Tessai,” Isshin called out in his captain voice, “I know Kisuke has contingency plans for everything.  What does he have for his own abduction?”</p>
<p>Tessai blinked and forced his way past the self-blame with which Isshin intensely sympathized.  “I need to see what notes he’s left on the servers, and those notes will be well hidden, but I do have a short list of contacts to call in.  We also need to examine the dead Incubators at maximum priority, then make sure the pigeons and turtles are indoors by dawn.”  Tessai appeared to be counting tasks off on his fingers, one of which hovered for an extra second.  “No.  First call Hachigen to expedite the delivery of the Tenkai Kecchū; we need to do Boss’s work for him, which will take time.  Mrs. Kaname, we will confer in half an hour; leave Yoruichi with Nagisa and try to get some rest.  Akemi, Tsubokura, you're with me.”  Rin trembled to attention while Tessai worked past his frustration at the sheer amount of speaking he’d been doing.  The bespectacled man had one last addendum: “Actually, everyone else, rest.  Now.”  His glasses glinted as he strode off in the direction of Kisuke’s lab, clearly expecting his instructions to be obeyed precisely and without question.</p>
<p>Rin and Homura — the one who was still here — exchanged a glance and followed Tessai.  Not everyone responded likewise.</p>
<p>“You're telling us Magic Man got kidnapped by Homura, who was <em>just in the room with us</em>, and he actually had a backup plan for that?”  Miki sounded skeptical of her own words, even leaving aside the picture of reality they painted.  Several other faces around the room silently echoed the statement that, yes, this indeed seemed quite mad even by Kisuke's standards.</p>
<p>Isshin unlocked his phone and dialed Urahara Shop as he answered.  “Yes.  We’ll see if Homura can clear that first thing up, and the second thing is something you get used to if you know Kisuke long enough.”  He noted the blatant doubt aimed in his direction, equally blatantly ignored it, and turned his attention to the phone in his hand.  “Hi, Hachi?  Kisuke wanted those Tenkai Kecchū for something, I think I know what, but we need them in a hurry now.”</p>
<p>“What happened?”  Hachi’s usual genial tone was gone, replaced by brusque seriousness.</p>
<p>“Kisuke’s gone missing.”</p>
<p>Hachi didn’t swear.  He never swore.  But his sharp sigh may as well have been a particularly creative and highly articulate curse.  “… Do you need me there?”</p>
<p>“Probably not.  Tessai apparently has a list of reinforcements to call.  And orders to give.  Lots.”</p>
<p>“It’s that bad?”</p>
<p>“Sure seems like it.”</p>
<p>“Understood.  You will have the goods within the hour.”</p>
<p>Despite the circumstances, Isshin snorted.  “You make this sound like a crime ring or something.  But thanks.”  For more than the logistical support; Hachi was very good at cheering people up.</p>
<p>“You’re welcome.  Good luck.”</p>
<p>Ending the call, Isshin surveyed the room and took stock of his companions.  Yoruichi had departed at some point, likely to resume watch over her slumbering ward.  Tōshirō and the Kaname family (minus Tatsuya, who was still asleep) clustered around Tomoe, having clearly reached a silent agreement that she would be most in need of support.  Jūshirō had somehow ended up surrounded by Karin, Yuzu, and Miki.  Ichigo and his friends, in various levels of wakefulness, were trading grim looks and quietly discussing something in a corner.</p>
<p>“Jūshirō, Tōshirō, Rukia, we have Incubators to dissect.  Let’s get ready to ward the hell out of them just in case.  Everybody else, please go and sleep like Tessai said.  We’ll discuss what’s going on in the morning.”</p>
<p>“… Can I watch?”</p>
<p>Isshin almost missed Tomoe’s whispered query.  The girl herself didn’t seem like she realized she’d spoken for a few seconds.  Then, receiving no response, she tried again.  “Can I watch you examine the Incubators?”</p>
<p>“I want to see too,” Miki contributed.  “You know, see what the magic you use is like.  It might be good to know and stuff.”</p>
<p>“You kids should get as much rest as you can.”  Isshin got the distinct feeling he was fighting a losing battle, but he was still going to be a responsible adult, dammit.</p>
<p>“What do you mean <em>kids</em>?  We’re close enough to Hitsugaya’s age; she’s in his actual class.”  Miki latched onto the less important part of Isshin’s statement and it was way too early in the morning to figure out how to address how incredibly inaccurate the age comparison was.</p>
<p>Throwing responsible adulthood to the wind, Isshin relented and said, “Fine, anybody who wants to spectate can do so.  You’re ignoring Tessai’s instructions, not mine.”  He headed toward the shop’s entrance, ignoring the many footsteps behind him that implied unhealthily little fear of Tessai.</p>
<p>The lifeless Incubators lay as they had been left, ensconced in their little wards.  The first order of business should be to reinforce those wards so they could bring the Incubators onto the property without worrying about a Trojan horse scenario, but they lacked the manpower to manage anything as comprehensive as the shop’s main wards.  Or should they keep the Incubators outside and risk their examination being observed or interrupted?  Most of the Karakura crew couldn’t leave the premises since that would reveal their presence, but that might not be an issue depending on who had followed Isshin out.</p>
<p>He glanced over his shoulder and saw, as expected, Jūshirō, Tōshirō, Rukia, Tomoe, and Miki.  Uryū trailed behind them, propping up a groggy Orihime.</p>
<p>Good, this was fine.  This was workable.  This was… this was just too early.  At least the early morning drowsiness was blocking out some of the parenting regret— no, stop it.  Bad brain, no coffee for you.  <em>Somebody else take over, please.</em>  Jūshirō met Isshin's pleading eyes and stepped forward, seamlessly claiming the role of responsible adult.</p>
<p>While Jūshirō took charge like a proper captain, Isshin scanned the street for threats.  There were no other Incubators in sight, and no reiatsu signatures caught his attention.  His eyes did hover over a statue a few blocks away that he didn’t remember seeing before, but it was far enough that he couldn’t make out any details, so he shook off his distraction and returned to the task at hand.</p>
<p>“… so we'll conceal ourselves with Kyokkō as we perform the dissections.  While we will be more vulnerable off the property, any observers won't be able to target us directly and we will be near enough to the safety of the wards that we should be able to escape any emergencies.”  Yeah, that made sense.  Jūshirō had Isshin's most intense gratitude.</p><hr/>
<p>Rin was beginning to wonder why he was here.  While Tsukabishi flitted from cabinet to laptop to file with speed and grace unbefitting a man his size, piecing together who-knew-what from who-knew-what-else, Akemi and Rin mostly tried to stay out of the way.  While he had heard legends (read: horror stories) of Urahara’s information obfuscation methods, never in his wildest dreams had Rin imagined the sort of puzzle Tsukabishi was assembling now.  Couldn’t the ex-captain just encrypt a flash drive, hide it in the room, and tell his assistant the password or something?  Clearly not.</p>
<p>Slowly but surely, Rin’s frustration at his own uselessness began to overshadow his crushing social anxieties.  He turned to the room’s other unoccupied occupant.</p>
<p>“So uh, Akemi, was it?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Do you know what we’re supposed to be doing?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>Well, that was real helpful.</p>
<p>“I was told you had powers, but I didn't get a lot of information.  What can you do?  Anything I need to know?”  Rin cringed at the possibly personal questions that spewed from his mouth.</p>
<p>Akemi rolled her eyes almost imperceptibly, then shrugged.  “Were you briefed on magical girls?”</p>
<p>Rin nodded, and Akemi flashed violet.  When the light died down, she had a silver buckler with mechanical-looking components on her left arm.  Her clothes had changed, too, but Rin never paid a lot of attention to clothes, so he just stared at the shield.</p>
<p>By all indications, Akemi was done talking.  Rin fidgeted in place for a few seconds, trying to not look as awkward as he felt, before he broke the silence again.</p>
<p>“So what should we—”</p>
<p>“Akemi,” Tsukabishi interjected, brandishing an open laptop.  “Boss left a puzzle to unlock a clue.  Simple, but timed.  I'm not fast enough.”</p>
<p>Rin could practically see the gears turning behind Akemi's eyes.  “What if I weren’t here?”</p>
<p>“Then we would need a different plan.”</p>
<p>Akemi sighed and grabbed the laptop, which displayed a partially filled grid of numbers, a 3D model of a wire puzzle, and a few lines of instructions.  Her right hand hovered over the keyboard and her shield clicked.</p>
<p>Rin gaped as Akemi input numbers faster than he could follow.  <em>Click.</em>  More numbers.  <em>Click.</em>  With a few swipes on the trackpad, the wire puzzle was dismantled.  Akemi handed the laptop back to Tsukabishi.  Rin pondered the clicks — did the shield have some sort of computation system in it?</p>
<p>Tsukabishi walked across the room and plugged the laptop into a small nest of dongles.  Rin reevaluated Akemi, who hadn’t previously seemed impressive for any reason except her age, and might have been staring; Akemi met his gaze expressionlessly.</p>
<p>Once again, Rin fumbled for something to say.  “Can’t Urahara just put this stuff on an encrypted drive or something?”  Screw it, he might as well just regurgitate every thought he’d had for the past five minutes; there had to be actual conversation in there somewhere.</p>
<p>To Rin’s complete surprise, the corners of Akemi’s mouth twitched upward.  Progress!  Then the room was flooded with noise.</p>
<p>BEEPBEEPBEEEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP! BEEPBEEPBEEEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!</p>
<p>“What the hell?”</p>
<p>“Mr. Tsukabishi, please explain.”</p>
<p>“Not my fault.”</p>
<p>BEEEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEPBEEP BEEPBEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEEEP BEEP BEEPBEEPBEEP! BEEPBEEP BEEEEPBEEP!</p>
<p>Rin looked around for speakers.  “Is this an alarm or something?”</p>
<p>“None I recognize,” Tsukabishi responded, raising his voice either in frustration or to be heard over the beeping.</p>
<p>BEEEEPBEEPBEEEEPBEEP BEEEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEPBEEEEP BEEEEPBEEEEP BEEEEP! BEEEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEPBEEEEPBEEP!</p>
<p>“Can we shut it up somehow?” Rin pleaded.  He noticed that Akemi had stopped looking annoyed and now seemed thoughtful, which probably did not bode well for any scheduled upshutting.</p>
<p>BEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEEEP BEEP BEEPBEEEEPBEEPBEEP! BEEEEPBEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEPBEEP!</p>
<p>“I believe this is Morse code,” Akemi decided.  Tsukabishi glanced at her, then around the room.  He cocked his head like he was listening to a whisper rather than obnoxiously reverberating beeps.  Wheels were turning.  Tsukabishi's contemplative face closely matched Akemi's from moments ago.</p>
<p>BEEPBEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEPBEEP BEEP! BEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEP BEEPBEEPBEEEEPBEEP BEEPBEEP! BEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEP BEEEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!</p>
<p>Rin had heard of Morse code.  He definitely did not understand it.  As far as he could figure, if the lab was equipped to beep obnoxiously, it was probably equally well equipped to replay a voice recording.</p>
<p>“This whole thing seems awfully complicated,” he observed.  “What’s the code saying, anyway?”</p>
<p>BEEEEPBEEEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEPBEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEPBEEP! BEEEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEEEP BEEP!</p>
<p>“The column of the swivel chair contains two flash drives,” said Akemi.  “The green one uses the wifi password.”</p>
<p>BEEPBEEPBEEP BEEEEP BEEPBEEEEP BEEEEPBEEP BEEEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEEEPBEEP BEEEEPBEEPBEEP!</p>
<p>Tsukabishi dismantled the chair and, yes, there were two flash drives in there: a large green one and a smaller red one labeled “For Emergencies” (because this didn’t count as an emergency, naturally).</p>
<p>BEEEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEP BEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEP BEEEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP BEEEEPBEEP! BEEPBEEEEPBEEEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEPBEEEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP!</p>
<p>Tsukabishi opened one of several laptops lying around (not the one from earlier), scanned his thumb against a biometric sensor, and inserted the green flash drive.  A notification appeared, which he dismissed immediately before opening a command shell window.</p>
<p>BEEP BEEEEPBEEP BEEEEPBEEPBEEEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEPBEEP BEEEEPBEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEEEPBEEEEPBEEP BEEEEP BEEPBEEP BEEEEPBEEEEPBEEEEP BEEEEPBEEP!</p>
<p>The noise stopped at last.  “Standard Twelfth Division encryption,” Tsukabishi noted, handing Rin the laptop.  Akemi bore a wry half-smirk, the most cheerful expression Rin had seen on her face so far even if it didn't quite reach her eyes.  Encrypted drive indeed.</p>
<p>Speaking of— “What's the key?  Uh, wifi password.”  Rin wasn’t trying to make conversation at this point; he actually needed to know.  Twelfth Division had secrets up the wazoo and everyone knew it, though even Captain Kurotsuchi wasn’t as outright insane about hiding them as Urahara apparently was; if even the most basic of Twelfth's encryption protocols were found to be anything short of functionally uncrackable, dirt on the entire division would be echoing through the Seireitei inside of a week.</p>
<p>Tsukabishi reached into a drawer and retrieved a pen and a scrap of paper, hastily scrawled some monster of a password, and handed it over.  Said password contained punctuation, numbers, and letters in mixed case, and was well over fifty characters long.  Rin sighed and started typing.</p>
<p>BEEEEPBEEEEPBEEEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP BEEEEPBEEPBEEEEPBEEEEPBEEPBEEEEP!</p>
<p>“Ack!” Rin yelped, wincing as the noise resumed.  “What now?”</p>
<p>“Colon, end parenthesis,” Akemi responded doubtfully.  “That was a… smiley face?  And…”</p>
<p>BEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP BEEPBEEEEP!</p>
<p>“Now he seems to be laughing at us.”  Akemi sounded as absolutely <em>done</em> as Rin felt.</p><hr/>
<p>Three Incubator terminals watches as invisible humans dissected the two terminals they had captured.  Even outside the bounds of their main wards, the humans were concealed well enough that the Incubator was unable to ascertain their identities or the extent of their abilities.</p>
<p>Not entirely incapable, technically, but functionally so: any attempt to penetrate the concealment spells and whatever wards were in effect would instantly inform the humans of the Incubator’s incursion.  Whatever information it might stand to gain was extremely unlikely to offset the drawbacks of revealing itself.</p>
<p>The Incubator decided that one terminal would be sufficient to monitor the situation for any obvious changes, and so diverted two terminals to observe the intruder masquerading as a statue merely fifty-seven meters away.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So it turns out I don’t know how to write parents.  Good thing Isshin is still figuring out how to <em>be</em> a parent.  He’s like two decades in, but from a shinigami lifespan standpoint he’s just getting started so I try to cut him a little slack.</p>
<p>One line of thought which I couldn’t quite fit into the actual story is that Isshin internally refers to a lot of the cast by surname because he’s honestly a little spooked by how easily he let Homura into his heart, and he’s set up unconscious defenses against any imminent repeats.  For a while, he’s afraid of letting especially vulnerable people get too close to him, even if they need his help, because he tends to care too deeply otherwise.  I imagine this is a coping mechanism he acquired while recovering from his wife’s death, which means it would have kicked in similarly after his household took in Rukia even if he was aware of her circumstances.  It doesn’t really affect the story or how he outwardly treats anybody, but it figures prominently in my mind so I thought I might as well mention it.</p>
<p>Rin, on the other hand, internally refers to people by their surnames because he doesn’t really know these people and he has crushing social anxieties.  And crushing almost everything else anxieties.  Lots of those.</p>
<p>I actually spend way too much time thinking about this because I have weird mental processes that determine who gets the first-name basis in my own internal monologue, and it bleeds into my writing even if I try to stop it so mostly I don't bother.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. That Could Have Gone Better</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Now that I consider it, I don’t think we ever get a canonical explanation of the full scope and limitations of Gallifreyan telepathy.  Even if we did, its reliability could be suspect due to numerous <strike>retcons</strike> overlapping temporal anomalies.</p>
<p>I wonder what I can credibly do with this…</p>
<p>We’ll find out, but not yet.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Doctor considered himself a good — scratch that, an <em>excellent</em> — multitasker.  Now, for instance, he was proving himself quite adept at eavesdropping on a pair of children while also assessing completely non-invasive scans of said children.  Very adept, if he did say so himself.  Which he did, only not aloud.  Nonetheless, after a solid hour of eavesdropping and assessing, he had drawn no especially useful conclusions from the scans and was only just noticing that the conversation had gone in a complete circle twice.</p>
<p>“But if we’re in a literal time machine, you have all the time in the world,” Sakura observed for the third time, the rising volume of her voice indicating that she too had noticed the cyclical nature of the discussion.  “I still don’t get why you’re in such a hurry!”</p>
<p>“We cannot simply drop into time anywhere we choose,” Akemi replied.  The scans showed tension in most of the muscles below her neck, but the Doctor didn’t have to look up to figure that her face remained as impassive as usual.  “If we could, we would not have bounced off as soon as we hit the timestream.”</p>
<p>“But <em>why</em>?”</p>
<p>“Time around Mitakihara is unstable.  It keeps shifting, meaning that the point of insertion I used to land earlier might close at any moment.”</p>
<p>“Any moment in <em>what</em>?  We’re travelling through time, so can’t you just go back to when it was open?”</p>
<p>The Doctor found that he wasn’t paying the scans any attention, so he poked his head out from his little nest of technology and diverted the conversation in what he hoped was a productive direction.</p>
<p>“Imagine that time is a tapestry.  The TARDIS is like a separate needle and thread that can enter and exit the tapestry at will.  But the tapestry is constantly being woven, only the sequence of stitches doesn’t happen in time.  It happens in… you don’t have a word for it, actually.  It’s something causal and definitely <em>timey</em>, but it’s not defined by increasing entropy like your garden-variety cause and effect.”  Akemi straightened her back and blinked when the Doctor said “entropy”; he considered that reaction significant and would figure out why he did so once he stopped talking, but right now he was on a roll.  “So as the tapestry grows, it gets moved and shifted about, and openings where the TARDIS could enter easily might get folded over or squeezed shut, or pulled so tight that the needle just doesn’t fit.  It’s especially bad around where you just came from, because someone or something else has already been fiddling with the tapestry.  It seems like threads have been cut and stitched over, and not just once either.  There’s evidence of dozens of restitchings that have been torn out and done again and again.”</p>
<p>The Doctor paused to draw breath and make sure he hadn’t lost his audience completely.  Sakura had her arms crossed and her face flickered between neutrally nonplussed and generally fed up with life.  He caught sight of Urahara’s valiant attempt to stifle a laugh; the man almost managed to pretend it was a cough.  His eyes were thoughtful and sharp, but his amusement seemed genuine enough.</p>
<p>Surely he wasn’t mocking the Doctor’s explanation.</p>
<p>Akemi opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again.  “You are terrible at fabric metaphors,” she declared.</p>
<p>This wouldn’t do.  The Doctor raised one eyebrow, then the other, and addressed his critic with a tone as grave as a tomb.  “Homura.  Can I call you Homura?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Homura, I <em>invented</em> fabric metaphors.”</p>
<p>The merest twitch of an eyelid betrayed Akemi's suspicion that maybe the Doctor was exaggerating.  Or maybe it was just irritation at his use of her given name.</p>
<p>“You seem quite knowledgeable about this sort of thing,” Urahara noted in an almost unnaturally offhanded tone.  “I’m particularly surprised by your familiarity with our little corner of time, especially since I got the impression that you’re… from out of town, shall we say.”  The shadow Urahara’s hat cast over much of his face made his grin appear ominous, perhaps even intimidating.</p>
<p>Nobody intimidated the Doctor.  He briefly considered trying to reproduce the effect, but his fez didn't have a brim to cast such a shadow and had apparently gotten knocked off by a loose cable anyhow.  Instead, he affected his best knowing grin to match Urahara’s and said, “You know what caused the restitching.”  It wasn't a question.</p>
<p>“Do I.”  That wasn't a question either.</p>
<p>“Does it have to do with why Homura can pilot the TARDIS.”</p>
<p>“Do you think I would so easily reveal Ms. Akemi’s secrets.”</p>
<p>“Why don’t you guys just take turns asking each other questions?” Sakura suggested in wholly unironic question format.</p>
<p>The Doctor’s affected grin became a bit less fake.  “That's a fantastic idea.”</p>
<p>“I still won’t tell you any secrets that aren’t mine to share,” Urahara cautioned, glancing at Akemi before fixing the Doctor with a steely stare.  “Choose your questions wisely.”</p>
<p>“I wouldn't expect anything less.”</p>
<p>Urahara and the Doctor sort of stared each other down for ten seconds or so before Sakura snapped, “Somebody go first!”</p>
<p>“All right,” Urahara replied a bit too quickly.  “Why are you studying our region of spacetime?”</p>
<p>Not “what were you doing there?” but already “why were you doing it?”  This was going to be interesting.  “I’ve been trying to find ways of navigating similar, equally heavily altered regions of time and hoped to find a good starting point in the Mitakihara anomaly.  I take it that answers your question.”</p>
<p>“Absolutely.”</p>
<p>“My turn then.  What are you?”</p>
<p>Urahara pulled a paper fan from his sleeve and waved it rather obnoxiously in front of his face.  “I am the proprietor of the High Spirits magic shop—”</p>
<p>“And I thought we were having a good-faith exchange of information.”</p>
<p>Akemi rolled her eyes a tiny bit.  Sakura widened hers dramatically and said, “He got you good.”</p>
<p>Urahara pouted for a moment, but he put his fan away and resumed speaking more seriously.  “I am part of a resistance movement against a spiritual predator which preys upon human youths, and a wielder of powers which allow me to oppose said predator.”</p>
<p>“Spiritual?”  The Doctor considered what he knew about human spiritual beliefs.  Most of what came to mind was pure superstition, at least as far as he knew: seances, predicting the future with cards, bogeymen, that sort of thing.  But the man in front of him didn’t seem like the superstitious sort, so what was his bogeyman?</p>
<p>“You asked your question, and I think I answered it as well as you answered mine.  My turn, and then you can pick up that thought.”</p>
<p>The Doctor shrugged.  He wasn’t satisfied, but he was getting a decent sense of how much worth Urahara assigned the little snippets of information they'd exchanged.  He could make this work, but he had to seem at least a bit cooperative.  “All right, ask away.”</p>
<p>“What are <em>you</em>?”</p>
<p>It certainly wasn’t the most original question.  The Doctor mentally shuffled through the information he’d already given, much of it before he had realised just how sharp Urahara was.  “I am a veteran time traveller, an explorer, and a compulsive dabbler.”  Taking a chance, the Doctor gave out a bit extra.  “I’m also an alien.”</p>
<p>He’d mostly wanted to gauge Urahara’s response to what was hopefully a startling assertion, but the Doctor wasn’t getting much to work with; Urahara adopted a look of mild surprise that could have been completely fake.  The man didn’t have a lot of tells, especially with his hat shading his eyes.  (Actually, the inscrutability spoke volumes on its own, but only volumes of things the Doctor had already worked out, so that side of matters was a wash.)  Sakura, meanwhile, glanced rapidly between the two men as though confused about why Urahara wasn’t calling the Doctor out on his claim.</p>
<p>The only truly interesting reaction came from Akemi, who blinked and stiffened just as she had when the Doctor had mentioned entropy.  This was definitely going to be useful at some point.</p>
<p>Akemi noticed the Doctor's stare (was it that obvious?) and put more attention than was probably necessary into jiggering a toggle switch.</p>
<p>“I guess we’re just ignoring that alien thing,” Sakura muttered after several seconds of awkward silence.</p>
<p>“My turn again, I think.”  Urahara made no objections, so the Doctor pursued the line of questioning he’d had to drop earlier.  He could probably phrase everything he wanted to know as one question, but the pattern this exchange was rapidly establishing indicated that the answer would lack depth, so he would have to ask multiple clarifying questions anyway.  Rather than take the deficit, the Doctor opted for one simple question at a time and hoped that the extra information he’d just dropped would buy him a properly forthcoming response.  “What do you mean by ‘spiritual’?”</p>
<p>Urahara stayed quiet for a while; the Doctor honestly couldn’t tell whether he was considering the question or had just clammed up.  Silence reigned for a brief eternity.  Finally, Urahara spoke, but it wasn't really an answer.  “I would like to try something.”  He raised his cane, pointing the base at his own chest.</p>
<p>And pushed it straight through.</p>
<p>The Doctor was normally quite sanguine about other people’s odd behaviours; the universe was too vast for him to catalogue every strange action folks took, but most of those actions made some amount of sense or at least could be made sense of, and he took them in stride.  But he was admittedly rather startled to watch a man promptly impale himself on a blunt object.</p>
<p>There was no blood.  That was the first thing the Doctor noticed once his initial shock had subsided: Urahara’s cane had gone cleanly through his chest, and there was no blood.</p>
<p>The next thing that stood out was the mass of psychic energy that launched itself from Urahara’s body, pushed back by the cane’s tip.  A mass of psychic energy so dense that the Doctor could see it with his eyes.  And it looked like Urahara.  It was holding the cane, wearing the hat, and looking straight into the Doctor’s eyes as the body hit the floor.</p>
<p>The mass of energy — if this was what Urahara had meant by “spiritual” then this would naturally be termed his spirit — had a long red ribbon attached to it, drifting weightlessly through the air.  With much less thought than he usually put into things, the Doctor reached out and grasped the end of the ribbon with both hands.  He turned it over and examined both sides, then looked back to the spirit.</p>
<p>This was too interesting, and never mind the knowledge hoarding match.</p>
<p>Urahara seemed to second that conclusion.  “You can see me?  And even the reiraku.  Fascinating.”</p>
<p>“Reiraku?”</p>
<p>“I suppose you don’t have a proper translation.  It literally means ‘spirit ribbon’ and it’s sort of a visual representation of a person’s spiritual power.  It usually takes a bit of experience to notice it.”  Yes, Urahara was also done with the question game.  It wouldn’t work if neither player could restrain his curiosity.</p>
<p>“You appear to be composed of what my culture refers to as psychic energy,” the Doctor remarked, “but I’ve never seen it so concentrated.  The reiraku is new too.  What do you call this?”  He gestured vaguely at Urahara’s body, then at his spirit.</p>
<p>“I’ve removed my soul from my body,” Urahara explained like this was the most ordinary thing in the universe and the Doctor was dense for having to ask.  “My cane can do that.  My abilities are enhanced when I’m like this, but as you can see, my body is entirely vulnerable.”  The man lifted said body on the crook of his cane and grinned at it before abruptly changing the subject.  “What is your culture, by the way?”</p>
<p>“Would it surprise you to know that I’m from a far-off, technologically advanced civilisation?”  Urahara was being cagey again (there was no way he’d just revealed such a critical weakness to a perfect stranger just to lead into that non sequitur), so turnabout was fair play.  “You wouldn’t have heard of us.”</p>
<p>“You two aren’t getting anywhere,” Sakura asserted from the sidelines.</p>
<p>Urahara hid a smirk (poorly) behind his fan.  “You’re the one who suggested this format, Ms. Sakura.”</p>
<p>“And I regret it with all of my being.  Try asking something we can use.  Like, what caused the thing that made you want to look at Mitakihara?”</p>
<p>“An insightful question indeed,” Urahara said smoothly.  “As Ms. Sakura so eloquently put it, what caused the thing?”</p>
<p>“You can shove it,” Sakura informed him.  “And you,” she addressed the Doctor with a glare, “answer the question and we’ll make sure he answers yours.”</p>
<p>The Doctor moved as though to set aside the previous lines of inquiry, though he focused on shifting a different bundle of thoughts to reach the raw facts underneath.  Emotional baggage was as heavy and cumbersome as always.  He sighed, meeting Urahara's steely eyes with his own, and allowed just a hint of his true exhaustion to seep into his posture.  Vulnerability.  Frankness.</p>
<p>“They’re called Weeping Angels.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>Sayaka had thought she was ready for the dissection.  The Incubators looked like cats or rabbits, and she vaguely remembered cutaway diagrams of different mammals from a science textbook; those were gross, but familiar.  Then again, maybe the insides would look like meat at a butcher’s shop; she didn’t frequent those, but she knew what to expect.</p>
<p>It turned out that Sayaka was not ready.</p>
<p>Dr. Kurosaki started by laying an Incubator neatly on its side and slicing its belly, which made sense; they had to get to the insides somehow.  But the way the pelt peeled off like a fuzzy orange skin raised goosebumps on Sayaka’s arms, and that was just the start.</p>
<p>The incubator didn’t have anything that looked like muscle or guts or bone.  It looked for all the world like a blood-filled sponge, with a texture of gray foam stained red.  The stuff was mottled with stringy patches of darker gray, almost like marble.  If marble were a bloody sponge instead of a stone.  Dr. Kurosaki poked the surface with the back of his scalpel, and blood welled up.  He pulled back the tool and the spongey stuff rebounded, sucking the blood back in.</p>
<p>“Is it like that all the way through?” Mr. Hitsugaya wondered.  He held out his hand, and his palm glowed green.  The light covered the Incubator's open belly, then faded.  “This doesn’t make any sense.”</p>
<p>Dr. Kurosaki made another cut on the Incubator’s back, around the red ring-shaped mark.  This time, the skin wasn’t the only thing that came off.  Beneath the ring was a beige sac of some kind, sized and shaped like a peeled head of garlic.  A fibrous gray mesh connected it to the sponge-flesh and to several other organ… things, including what looked like half of a miniature brain, which Dr. Kurosaki turned over in his gloved hand.</p>
<p>Sayaka was determined to <em>not hurl</em>.</p>
<p>Mr. Hitsugaya squeezed at the Incubator's front legs.  “It feels like there should be bones,” he remarked; then his eyes narrowed as he inspected a paw.  “It has reishi vents here,” he noted.</p>
<p>Dr. Kurosaki looked up from the brain bit.  “Just like…”  He trailed off and stared at whatever Mr. Hitsugaya had found.  “Yet we never sensed them.  Are they that good at concealing their reiatsu?  Or do the vents serve another purpose?”</p>
<p>While the two adults examined something Sayaka couldn’t see, Ishida walked up to inspect the half-brain that still sat in Dr. Kurosaki’s hand.  He held up a glowing— <em>holy crap is that a lightsaber?</em></p>
<p>Ishida very gently stuck the tip of the lightsaber blade into one of the fibers between the brain thing and the sac.  The fiber sizzled, popped, and oozed several drops of black sludge; the blade flickered brighter for an instant.  Ishida pushed his glasses up his face with his off hand and commented, “How fascinating.”</p>
<p>“Um,” Sayaka added intelligently.  Bile rose in the back of her throat, but she fought it back down because she <em>would not hurl</em>.</p>
<p>“Um,” Mami repeated queasily.</p>
<p>“Umm,” Dr. Kurosaki agreed as he noticed the goop still dripping onto his glove.  “Did you have to?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Ishida replied in a bland tone.  “My Seele Schneider’s response confirmed that these cords contain pure, highly condensed liquid reishi, and the hue of the liquid in question as well as the shock to the blade imply that the reishi is Hollow-like in nature.  I dare say I’ve figured out more than the two of you combined.”</p>
<p>“Um,” Sayaka said again, gracefully heading off a potential argument.  “What <em>have</em> you guys figured out?”</p>
<p>“Well,” mused Dr. Kurosaki, “the main body seems to be a mesh of largely undifferentiated tissue interspersed with blood channels, and in place of a heart, circulation seems to be driven by reiatsu flow conducted by those cords.  There are openings at the wrists that I think are actually reishi intakes—”</p>
<p>“You sound like Urahara,” Rukia pointed out.</p>
<p>“Kisuke would love this.”</p>
<p>“He's not here,” Ruki snapped, sounding more sleep-deprived than actually frustrated.  “Can you explain like a normal person?”</p>
<p>Dr. Kurosaki scratched his beard thoughtfully, but was saved from having to rephrase when Hitsugaya spoke up.  “Its body is spongy and we don’t know why, but it pumps blood using magic that it moves around through those gray fibers, and it inhales the magic in the air through its wrists.”  Crouching near the Incubator, Hitsugaya pointed at something that Sayaka still didn’t see.</p>
<p>“But the fibers are concentrated around this sac in the back,” Hitsugaya’s dad continued.  “This looks like a trapdoor mechanism…  Is this where it puts Grief Seeds?”  He looked at Mami, who nodded hesitantly.</p>
<p>“So it takes in Grief Seeds here and… <em>digests</em> them to produce energy,” Hitsugaya concluded with an almost invisible shudder.  He looked less grumpy than usual, and more totally outraged; more shockingly, his normally easygoing father shared the expression.  Then again, shock and disgust were normal reactions to the idea of something digesting girls’ souls.</p>
<p>Sayaka was <em>not going to hurl</em>.  But it was going to be a near thing.</p>
<p>She turned to Mr. Hitsugaya and shifted the topic a little.  “So what was that green thing you did?”</p>
<p>“That was a diagnostic spell,” he explained gently.  His voice was soothing, and the nausea faded a little.  “Normally it's used to find parts of the body that aren’t how they're supposed to be, due to either injury or disease.  I have no idea how an Incubator’s body is supposed to be, but there’s nothing at all that seems normal.”  Despite the calm tone of his voice, Mr. Hitsugaya’s face held none of its usual cheer.</p>
<p>“Do you think I could learn to do that?” Sayaka asked.</p>
<p>“I think so.”  Mr. Hitsugaya gave a shadow of a smile.  “You should probably ask Dr. Kurosaki, though; he’s more of an expert on this than I am.  Isshin?”</p>
<p>Dr. Kurosaki didn’t answer.  Sayaka looked at the spot where he’d been crouching over the Incubator, but he was gone.  “Dr. Kurosaki?”</p>
<p>“His reiatsu disappeared,” Ishida breathed.  “When?  Why didn’t we notice?”</p>
<p>Everyone looked around in a panic, except Inoue, who had nodded off.</p>
<p>Hitsugaya's eyes narrowed.  “Get back to the wards.”  Nobody argued.</p>
<p>Sayaka ran inside and hurled.  She hoped this wasn’t going to be a pattern.</p>
<hr/>
<p>A gust of wind blew an outdated sheet of newsprint between the dissection and the Incubator terminal watching the process.  In that instant, a second stone interloper swept past the dissection site, leaving a small burst of energy in its wake.</p>
<p>The Incubator added the emission spectrum to its profile on the unknown beings.  It pruned possibilities until one remained.</p>
<p>Quantum-locked lifeforms.  Temporotrophic contact feeding.  High speed.  Positive identification confirmed.</p>
<p>The Weeping Angels were known entropic accelerants, and the Incubator would rather avoid them if possible.  But they were already present, and they could prove useful.  The added threat could pressure the humans into revealing more of their capabilities, and perhaps eliminate a substantial portion of their forces.  And, though the chances were almost negligible, the humans might eliminate the Weeping Angels present.  Regardless, obstacles to the Incubator's objectives would be severely diminished without any expenditure of resources.</p>
<p>The Incubator ran a swift calculation.  Then, in perfect unison, the two terminals monitoring the other Weeping Angel blinked.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This chapter was brought to you by as much pseudoscience as I could fit into my coffee mug.  (It’s a pretty big mug.)  This chapter was hindered by an inconsistency that wouldn’t have made any difference for another twenty chapters or so but was easier to fix now.</p>
<p>The Doctor also internally refers to his new companions by their surnames, in this case because I think the TARDIS translation circuits add suggestions about cultural norms whenever such norms are strongly reflected in language usage.  But he really wants to use given names in speech, both out of habit and because he holds a not inconsiderable amount of spite toward etiquette constructs.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Vanishing Acts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I’ve always thought of Shiro’s powers as waterier than Ichigo’s default; it sort of meshes with his hatred of the rain because the water, the <em>tempest</em>, belongs to Shiro and he can’t stand it when it’s just impotently splattered about.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Naturally, Urahara had made everything unnecessarily difficult; it was his modus operandi, and he remained true to form even when he wasn’t actually present.  Homura had half a mind to stick the emergency flash drive into a laptop to see if it was any easier to figure out, but she didn’t trust it not to violently explode or release legions of artificial pigeons into the room.  So, instead, she scrolled through far too many files of contingency plans.</p><p>She felt some combination of awe and frustration that Urahara had produced this much information in just a few weeks.  The frustration part kept growing, even after Tsubokura got the beeping to stop.</p><p>This drive had a partition dedicated to plans for “the eventuality that I am whisked away by a time traveller but Ms. Akemi remains available,” as the readme file in that partition’s root directory explained.  There was no simple lookup for whatever the present situation was, though, so the files had to be searched manually.  Some detached part of Homura's mind was surprised that the search term “blue box” turned up no useful results.</p><p>She did find a rather large file on what to do if another Homura appeared and abducted Urahara without explanation, though she wasn’t sure which scenarios most closely matched reality.  She did have to suppress a shudder at how eerily specific some of the nearest matches were, though.</p><p>Homura was about halfway done highlighting what seemed like useful plans to show the others when Ichigo's magic flooded her senses.  Like a leaden blanket, it weighed down the air, her body, seemingly the entire world.  For whatever reason, Ichigo was <em>enraged</em>, and it was terrifying.</p><p>Homura darted down the hall in an instant.  She noticed that Tsukabishi jammed the red flash drive into a computer without hesitation, even as he followed at her heels.</p><p>“Code Shiro,” he explained in response to her raised eyebrow.  This did not explain much at all; why would a “code white” require a red drive?  She chalked it up to Urahara being as inscrutable as always, and tried to feel reassured that there was apparently a protocol in place for Ichigo’s searing rage.</p><p>This managed to be the opposite of reassuring.</p><p>Homura opened the door to the dining room and stumbled at the sheer pressure of Ichigo’s fury.  It ran unrestrained through the air as he demanded of Ishida, “<strong>How could he just <em>disappear</em> while you were all right there?</strong>”</p><p>His voice had an eerie double tone to it, and Homura could swear his bared teeth were sharper than usual.  His eyes, now flecked with golden yellow, glared unwavering at Ishida’s own.  Ichigo also had his left fist embedded several centimeters into the table.</p><p>His magic felt so much darker than usual.  Heavier.  Almost Witch-like.  No, Hollow-like.  It pulsed like crashing waves, and Homura thought she would drown in it.</p><p>Then Ishida spoke, and he was the seawall that broke the swells.  Neither his voice nor his demeanor betrayed anything short of strength and confidence, even as he stood on the edge of being overwhelmed.  Even as he admitted, “I don’t know.”</p><p>Some of the energy drained out of Ichigo’s posture, but not in relief or even resignation; there was something in the way he held himself that made Homura feel almost <em>hunted</em> when his power swelled again.  Black bled into his sclera like ink dripped into boiling water.  Sayaka emerged from the bathroom and promptly fell to one knee, her head sagging in a sad parody of a knight before her sovereign, even as she struggled to right herself.</p><p>“<strong>You don’t <em>know</em>.</strong>”  Ichigo let the words hang in the air for a moment, as heavy as his aura.  “<strong>He’s gone and you didn’t even notice.</strong>”</p><p>Homura was vaguely aware of someone pushing past her.  Two someones.  Yuzu and Karin.  “Ichi-nii, stop!”</p><p>Gritting her teeth, Homura flared her magic against Ichigo’s.  Took one step toward him, then another.</p><p>“<strong>Yer getting sloppy, <em>Quincy</em>, lettin’ somebody take what’s <em>mine</em>.</strong>”  Ichigo gave no indication that he noticed his sisters’ presence.  His voice, his words sounded nothing like his own.  The word “Quincy” was spat like a curse.</p><p>“You need to calm yourself,” Ishida insisted.  “I don't know how to fix this, but I do know that blind rage is not part of the answer.”</p><p>Ichigo opened his mouth to snarl a retort, and Homura stopped time.  Just long enough to close the distance, to grab Ichigo’s wrist.  When she touched him, when she dragged him into the stop, his power overwhelmed hers and time resumed instantly.</p><p>Up close, faced with something so overwhelming that the only comparison in her mind was Walpurgisnacht herself, Homura could scarcely breathe.  She felt on the verge of tears.  But she’d survived worse.</p><p>“Stop this,” she managed.  Shouted past the suffocating pressure, though the words came out a mere whisper.  “Please.”</p><p>Ichigo met Homura’s eyes and hesitated.  The snarl melted into a momentary frown as he glanced between his sisters.  She could almost physically hear something shatter inside him, though she couldn’t place what it was.  And then Tsukabishi was beside her.</p><p>“Hakufuku,” he muttered, and the pressure relented.  The tempest folded back into Ichigo, and he fell over sideways, away from Homura.  Before she could respond, before she could so much as adjust her grip, Sado had Ichigo in his arms.  When had he arrived?</p><p>Sayaka got to her feet.  Karin and Yuzu held a conversation composed entirely of prolonged eye contact and relieved sighs.  Ishida took out a microfiber cloth and wiped his glasses.  The shop’s remaining occupants trickled into the room, all clearly curious but none bold enough to ask what had transpired.  Sado scooped Ichigo into a princess carry and headed for the stairs without a word; after a moment’s hesitation, the twins followed.</p><p>Inoue raised her head from the other end of the table, where she’d been all along, and rubbed her eyes.  Stifling a yawn, she looked up and down the room, taking stock of the faces that ranged from bewildered to relieved to flat-out terrified.</p><p>“What did I miss?”</p><p>Despite the absolutely valid question, the expressions around the room morphed into incredulity.</p><p>It was Ukitake who finally explained.</p><hr/><p>Madoka missed what happened, but she caught the explanation.  She didn’t understand; nobody did.  But it sounded like a disaster.</p><p>This was a different kind of disaster than the one in Asunaro.  That one was bad in a looming, distant way.  Lots of people were hurt or dead, and that was scary and tragic, but it wasn’t <em>right here</em>.  Madoka could worry about a whole city in a general sense and get mad at the Incubator for what happened, but that didn’t give her this twist in her gut.</p><p>Now three people she knew were gone, and nobody could say where they were or explain why they weren’t here.  Nobody could say that it wouldn’t happen again, that there was some way to make it stop, to bring anyone back.  It was terrifying.</p><p>And maybe she was picking up Ichigo’s feelings from when he found out his dad was one of the missing, but Madoka wasn't just scared.  She was angry, maybe offended somehow.  Like somebody had done something to her personally.</p><p>That was it.  This was <em>personal</em>.</p><p>She reached out, not with her hand but with something she couldn’t put into words, and tugged on the wisps of Ichigo’s magic that still hung in the air.  They felt like <em>anger-indignation-frustration-worry-</em> and she knew somehow that those weren’t her thoughts, her fears, but his.  Without really thinking about it, she ran those feelings through her not-fingers, soothing and smoothing the magic.</p><p>Something went taut, thrummed like a bowstring, then eased.  Threads of magic that felt dark as the depths of the sea on a stormy night faded and softened, becoming like sleeping moonlight and still-red-warm coals.</p><p>Madoka noticed Hitsugaya looking at her like she was as much a puzzle as the disappearances.  He noticed that she noticed, and looked away.  He turned toward Homura.</p><p>“We can’t continue like this,” he said after a moment's silence.  His shoulders drooped; Homura’s tensed.</p><p>“Everything was going so well until…” Homura trailed off, and her shoulders fell too.  She stared somewhere over Hitsugaya’s shoulder.</p><p>Until what?  Which one thing tipped the scales?  What drained Homura's hope like this?  The destroyed city?  Urahara’s departure?  Kyōko’s?  Dr. Kurosaki’s?  What was supposed to happen now that everything wasn’t going well?  Madoka peered at the hole Ichigo had left in the table, then at Homura’s Soul Gem.</p><p>Cold dread swirled in Madoka’s gut, matching the gem’s inky churn.  She reached out to grab the threads of magic like she’d done for Ichigo’s, but flinched back instantly.  The <em>hurt-regret-sorrow-guilt</em> snagged on her not-fingers and threatened to suck her in, to drown her and drag her into a whirlpool of despair, and all she wanted was to escape, to grab everyone the cared about and get them as far away as possible.  But— but this was Homura, her friend.  She couldn’t pull Homura away from herself.  So Madoka caught her breath and threw herself into the vortex.  She caught sight of eyes around the table going wide, heard someone cry out but the words were lost in a rushing sound like a thousand gusts of wind in her veins and around her brain, and—</p><p>A concert hall?  Madoka shook her head.  How did she get here?  But the same taint filled the air, the same raw misery she’d felt in the shop, and before her was a monstrous, massive mermaid of some sort — a Witch?  Madoka took a trembling step back, then another.  Now was not the time to wonder where she was.  Now was the time to get out.</p><p>The Witch clutched something in its hand, something eerily familiar.  Every part of Madoka’s mind screamed <em>run run run away get as far away as possible</em> but her body froze.  She couldn’t breathe, let alone run.  Was her heart even beating?  It had to be, she should feel it beating in her chest and pounding in her ears, but it felt for all the world like even her very blood had fallen still.</p><p>Still in what?  Terror?  Anticipation?  Madoka couldn't tell.</p><p>Then there was red.  A flash of red, an explosion of fire, and the hall crumbled.  Reality became a catwalk, skyscrapers bathed in orange light, and a sucking undertow of despair.  And by Madoka’s side stood…</p><p>“Homura!”</p><p>There was no response.  Madoka's body snapped into motion almost on its own.  She rushed to her friend, who showed no sign of noticing her presence.  Homura's jaw hung open a bit, slack yet tense at the same time, her tired eyes focused on nothing.</p><p>“Homura!” Madoka tried again.  “What was that?  Where are we?”  She glanced around, tried to get her bearings, saw the Mitakihara cityscape illuminated in the light of dusk— wasn’t it supposed to be late at night?</p><p>Again, Homura gave no answer.  She merely stepped forward, snatched something off the ground, and stared at her shield.  Stared with those terribly empty, unfocused eyes.  Madoka felt a shiver creep up her spine.  This was so, so wrong.</p><p>She reached for her friend’s hand, not knowing what she meant to do or say but certain that nothing could make this <em>worse</em>, but Homura turned away and walked down the catwalk, not gracefully like usual, but like a puppet that hadn’t noticed its strings were cut.  There was no life in her step, no hopes or dreams.  Only the smallest speck of purple remained in her Soul Gem.</p><p>Without thinking, Madoka set her arms wide and leapt forward to catch Homura in a hug.  But as soon as she made contact, Homura vanished like smoke in a gale and the embrace caught nothing but air.  Madoka cried out without words, just another voice drowned in that rushing wind—</p><p>Great gears loomed in the sky, buildings floated in a vortex around an enormous upside-down figure wracked with explosions—</p><p>An enormous weight pressed down from the sky and <em>everything burned</em>—</p><p>Walnut shells framed a shattering gem and an apology—</p><p>A headless body crumpled before jaws closed—</p><p>An arrow pierced a darkening gem—</p><p>A plea, a gunshot—</p><p>Madoka gasped.  She was back in the shop.  Homura was slumped on the table, dead to the world yet somehow so much more alive than she had been on the catwalk, with an orange half-bubble sucking darkness out of her Soul Gem like smoke, like the smoke that she’d become at Madoka's touch— Was that real?  Did that happen?  Madoka had no idea.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.  She leaned across the table and took Homura's right hand in hers, and she wept when it didn't disappear.</p><p>As Madoka sobbed into the table and grasped Homura’s hand like a lifeline, whispered conversations faded in and out of her awareness.</p><p>“–have to tell them–”</p><p>“–not our secret to—”</p><p>“–is in no shape to deal with—”</p><p>“–can’t help if you leave us in the dark–”</p><p>“–reinforcements won’t be here for—”</p><p>In the back of her mind Madoka knew the discussion was important, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.  All she could do now was soothe Homura’s agitated magic and try to anchor her when she woke.  The world around them faded away, until the whole universe was two sad girls face-down on a table.</p><hr/><p>Soon after the Incubator reported the Weeping Angels to its master, the terminals surrounding the magic shop shifted into a new formation, focused more on observation than containment.  In human-friendly terms, the terminals were pawns: by no means were they in short supply, but their utility was highly situational.  To continue to rely solely upon the Incubator for this situation would be a poor use of resources, so its master had elected to move the queen.</p><p>Once the Incubator determined that the Weeping Angels were positioned as well as they were likely to be of their own volition, it assigned two terminals to stare at them, holding them in place.  Soon, their time would come.</p><hr/><p>Someone knocked on the shop's front door.  In the wee hours of the morning.  At this point, Tessai no longer had it in him to be surprised.</p><p>There was no hint of reiatsu from the newcomer, but there was also no point in taking chances by ignoring a potential threat.  Tessai used an emergency override supplied by the red flash drive to route the front security camera to his laptop; while it was technically a bit less secure than leaving the feed properly closed-circuit and walking to the control room, he simply didn’t have the energy to do so.</p><p>The video feed showed a wavy-haired girl, probably a middle-schooler, with her hand raised to knock again.  Her overall appearance was disheveled, with a half-closed coat over her nightwear and strands of hair fluttering out of place.  Both her eyes and hair appeared to be green, although it was too dark to tell for sure.</p><p>“Does anyone know this person?” Tessai asked the room.  The hushed discussion shifted to baffled silence before four more crisp, polite knocks filled the air.</p><p>Miki rubbed her eyes.  “What’s Hitomi doing here?”  Tessai took this as a yes and gestured for her to elaborate.  “Shizuki Hitomi.  She's a friend, she goes to school with us, but why— why is she here?”  Apparently Miki decided to find out; Tessai followed her to the front of the shop, less wary than before but unwilling to let his guard down after the past few days.</p><p>Miki opened the door cautiously.  “Hitomi, what—”  Then Shizuki charged in and swept her up in a tight embrace.</p><p>“Sayaka, thank goodness!  I heard you disappeared, so I hacked some traffic cameras and—”</p><p>“You <em>what</em>?”  Miki pried her friend off her to better express her incredulity.</p><p>“Well, my father and one of his assistants hacked some traffic cameras,” Shizuki admitted, “and we found one that showed you near here but there aren’t any clear shots of this block so I was going to go door to door but I found you, you’re here, you’re okay— <em>are</em> you okay?”  Tessai made a mental note to re-map the area’s camera coverage.</p><p>“I’m fine,” Miki lied with a pained smile.  “Just… please don’t tell my parents where I am, okay?”</p><p>Shizuki looked Miki up and down, pondering.  Her eyes filled with something like realization.  “Oh.  Okay.”  Said eyes flickered to a small vomit stain on Miki's skirt.  “What’s that?”</p><p>“Crap.  No, I mean, it’s not— um.”</p><p>The two stood awkwardly by the door for a few seconds before Tessai's manners defeated his exhaustion.  “Come in,” he urged.  “Would you like something to drink?  Tea, perhaps?”  Miki met his eyes and mouthed, ‘Thanks.’</p><p>Shizuki startled as if noticing him for the first time, which might well have been the case given the circumstances.  “I, um.”  She looked quite small as she asked, “May I— do you have matcha?”</p><p>“I do indeed,” Tessai replied.  “Ms. Miki, would you show your friend to the dining room?”</p><p>“Sure.”  As Miki led Shizuki down the hall, Tessai prepared to channel the spirit of hospitality once more.  Something told him the caffeine would be much appreciated.</p><p>When he grabbed a cup for Shizuki’s tea, the handle cracked.  Though it didn't break fully, Tessai carefully set it aside and chose another.  He did not consider himself even remotely superstitious, but Tessai couldn’t help the chill of apprehension that washed over him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I originally meant for the Weeping Angel to start with Orihime, but said angel had other plans.  Don’t worry; I can fix this.  Probably.</p><p>Who am I kidding?  Everything’s ruined, and a certain yet-to-be-revealed evil mastermind is laughing at me.  An evil mastermind who now has two extra chapters (at minimum) to just do whatever, while I write myself into more corners trying to get out of this one.  And given what real life looks like right now, two chapters might take a while.</p><p>In other news, I am not subtle.  Like, at all.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Slightly Psychic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I write too many scenes of people waking up.  I’m not going to stop.</p><p>Many thanks to my friends, Romans, countrymen— ahem, the folks on the ANAI Discord server for being awesome, encouraging, and probably a bit insane.  That’s why they get these chapters before AO3 does.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Madoka stood on a path of gray stone, wondering how she’d gotten there.</p><p>Above her was a night sky full of unfamiliar constellations, stars shining brighter than they ought through a thin layer of high clouds.  The full moon rose straight ahead, so that the path looked like it spilled all the way from the lunar surface to her feet.  To the right was a wide grassy field, filled with gently rolling hills and sprinkled with little white flowers.  To the left…</p><p>To the left was a sheer cliff.</p><p>Madoka peered cautiously over the edge.  The cliff went down, so far down that she couldn’t see the bottom, but distantly she heard the crashing of waves.  A sea, perhaps, so far below that the moonlight failed to reach its surface and back.</p><p>“What is this place?” Madoka pondered aloud.  “Why am I here?”</p><p>“Isn’t that a question for the ages,” remarked a voice.  Madoka spun around, precariously close to the edge, to find that she was not alone.</p><p>Three forms stood not five meters away, backlit by moonlight.  One, perched on a frighteningly thin rocky outcropping, was a black-haired man with Aviator sunglasses, a cloak of billowing shadows, and a thick moustache.  In the field stood a more feminine form, this one of shifting light and darkness, with a wide, undulating petticoat that somehow managed to appear both white and black at the same time, and a hairstyle that matched Madoka's own.  Between them was the one who had spoken, the shape of a man standing on the stone path; his hair was long and flowing brown, his garb was white, and his face and hands looked like static on a television screen.  All three figures seemed at ease, and though their appearances were startling, Madoka found their presence surprisingly reassuring.</p><p>“Who are you?” she almost didn't feel the need to ask.</p><p>The female figure began, “I am --------,” but a sound of wind and rushing waters swept the name away.</p><p>Belatedly, Madoka realized that she hadn't introduced herself.  “Um, I’m Kaname Madoka.  Could you say your name again?”</p><p>“It’s too soon for my name to reach you,” the figure lamented.  Her voice sounded oddly familiar.  She turned to her companions.  “Why don’t you try?”</p><p>The middle figure bowed slightly; though his face showed no features, Madoka got the sense that he was grinning.  “Hello, Madoka; it’s a pleasure to meet you.  You may call me ------.”  Again, something snatched the final word away before it could reach Madoka's ears.</p><p>“Pardon?”</p><p>“----- ------.  I see my name can’t reach you either.”  His voice sounded less disappointed than his companion’s, and more like he’d had a guess proven right.</p><p>The final figure, in the black cloak, merely introduced himself with “------.”  He seemed thoroughly unsurprised when Madoka blinked at him in confusion.</p><p>Hoping that she would hear their voices more clearly from up close, Madoka stepped toward the trio, but the distance to them didn’t change.  She frowned and looked at her feet as she took another step.  She was definitely moving, but when she returned her eyes to the figures, they were no nearer than before.  Setting her jaw, she dashed forward and watched as space seemed to stretch.  After half a minute of running produced no results, Madoka stopped, her shoulders heaving.</p><p>“Fine,” she declared, defeated but still determined, “if I can't hear your names, we can give you nicknames.  Is there anything you’d like me to call you?”</p><p>The trio exchanged glances.  The black-cloaked one shrugged.</p><p>“Then I'll come up with something.”  Madoka put a hand to her chin.  Several seconds passed.</p><p>“You uh, might want to sit down,” she eventually admitted sheepishly.  “This might take a while.”</p><p>Madoka crossed her legs and sat on the path; the woman of light and darkness followed suit, taking a seat on the grass.  The man in white sat in perfect seiza.  The man in black didn’t move, apparently comfortable on his rocky perch.</p><p>Since turning over ideas in her head seemed to be doing nothing, after a while Madoka found her attention drifting to her surroundings.  It was easy to do so; the rugged cliff, the neatly laid path, the gleaming heavens, and the verdant hills were each beautiful in their own way, so serene and relaxing that she could probably fall asleep right there if she so desired.  She gazed at the bright moon, the twinkling constellations, the darkness that concealed the ebb and flow of the sea…</p><p>“I’ve got it!”  Madoka clapped her hands lightly, then smiled at the cloaked figure.  “You remind me of the sea, you seem steady like the tides or something like that, so you can be ‘Ushio’.  You,” she declared, turning to the figure in white, “seem sort of mysterious and moonbeamy, so ‘Tsukiya’, and…” she addressed the final figure, “You twinkle like the stars, so ‘Hoshiko’.”  She paused, and there was silence.  It seemed to stretch on for hours, but probably only a second or two passed before Madoka asked hesitantly, “Are those no good?”</p><p>The middle figure chuckled.  “‘Tsukiya’?  That's not bad at all.”  The one on the grass nodded and said, “I like ‘Hoshiko’.”</p><p>The last figure remained silent.  “Well?” Tsukiya asked, turning to him.  “What’s the verdict?”</p><p>The cloaked figure huffed.  “‘Ushio’ is fine,” he affirmed, and Madoka could swear that the gap between the trio and her shrank a little.</p><p>“Great!”  Madoka stood and turned on the spot, admiring the scenery which seemed to glow all the brighter in the moonlight now that she had friends with her.  The moon cast a faint rainbow in the high clouds, and if she looked closely she could see its gleam off of the waves far below.  “It’s nice to meet you, Tsukiya, Hoshiko, and Ushio.  I know we'll get along great.”</p><p>“Likewise,” Hoshiko replied.  Ushio nodded slightly, and once again Tsukiya gave the impression of a grin.</p><p>Madoka felt a tickle of uncertainty, like she was forgetting something, but she pushed it back to focus fully on her newfound friends.  “We should get to know each other.  How about hobbies?  Let's talk about what we like to do.”</p><p>“That’s a wonderful idea,” Tsukiya agreed.  “Why don’t you go first?”</p><p>Right, of course.  It was her idea, so it made sense for Madoka to start.  “Okay.  There’s this café with these nice outdoor tables, and I like to go there with my friends to study and chat.  My friend Homura brings her cat, a black cat called Yoruichi who's super independent and a bit of a troublemaker, but she's really reliable too, and she’s so smart.”  Madoka got the distinct impression that Tsukiya had raised an eyebrow despite his completely indistinct face and stopped gushing about the cat.  She turned to Hoshiko.  “What do you do for fun?”</p><p>“I like to pet the deer,” Hoshiko replied, looking over the hills.</p><p>“There are <em>deer</em> here?”  Madoka tried not to get too excited, but she was raised in the city after all.  She didn’t get a lot of opportunities to see such wildlife, let alone actually pet a deer.  “Do they just come right up to you?”</p><p>Hoshiko silently pointed into the distance.  Madoka squinted and glimpsed a little brown head, poking over the crest of a hill.  The head turned, made eye contact, and then bolted, revealing a doe followed by a gangly little fawn.  The white undersides of their tails seemed to glow in the moonlight.</p><p>“Aww,” Madoka lamented, “did I scare them away?”</p><p>Hoshiko seemed to smile softly, though it was hard to tell past the shifting illumination of her skin.  “They take a while to warm up to you; it helps to sit still and stay calm.”</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>“What about you, Tsukiya?” Hoshiko prompted.</p><p>Seemingly out of nowhere, Tsukiya produced an inkstone and brush.  “I quite enjoy a good conversation,” he said, “but I spend most of my time practicing calligraphy.”  As he said this, he wrote a single character on a smooth patch of stone.</p><p>Madoka leaned closer.  “May I?”  At Tsukiya’s nod, she walked forward, and though the world stretched to keep her three friends at a constant distance, she was able to approach the stone.  On it was written a clear, extraordinarily delicate ‘tsuki’.  Just five simple, graceful strokes stood out from the gray surface, ink still wet and glistening.  Five strokes that seemed to tell a story of a hundred years.</p><p>“How can you put so much feeling into such a simple kanji?” Madoka wondered, not really expecting an answer.</p><p>Tsukiya chuckled.  “Practice.”</p><p>Everyone turned expectantly to Ushio, who stood perfectly still, his cloak fluttering around him.  He said nothing.</p><p>“Ushio?” Madoka called out.  “What do you like to do?”</p><p>“I stand on this rock.”</p><p>“What?  Why?”  Madoka didn't want to judge someone's life choices this early in a friendship, but she could not for the life of her see what was so appealing about standing on a rock above a long drop.</p><p>Ushio shrugged.  “It’s a nice rock.”</p><p>“You don’t have anything else you’d rather do?”</p><p>Once again, Ushio shrugged.</p><p>Something nagged at the back of Madoka’s mind again.  Her face fell as she turned over her thoughts and couldn’t quite grip the twinge of unease that had distracted her.  She wasn’t trying to escape the awkwardness, really she wasn’t.  “I think…” she began, but came up short.  What was she forgetting?  “Wasn’t I in the middle of something?  Something important?”</p><p>“Perhaps you need to return to the outside world to remember,” Tsukiya mused.</p><p>Madoka suddenly remembered her first question, which still awaited an answer.  “Where are we now?  What do you mean by ‘outside world’?”</p><p>Ushio answered, “This is your inner world, the landscape of your soul.  It’s home to us, the spirits who are a part of you.  But you can’t fully access it yet, so you left some of your thoughts outside.”</p><p>“So I need to leave to remember what I’m supposed to be doing?”  She didn't want to leave her new friends so soon, but if Madoka really had been doing something important, she couldn’t dawdle.</p><p>“Most likely.”</p><p>“How do I do that?”</p><p>“It will be like waking up from a dream,” Tsukiya explained, clarifying nothing.</p><p>Wait a minute.  “Will I forget you, then?”</p><p>“Not entirely,” Hoshiko answered somberly.  “You may not fully remember this interaction, but some part of you will always know we’re here.”</p><p>“Can I ever come back?”</p><p>All three figures nodded.</p><p>Madoka sighed.  “Then I guess I’m ready to go.”</p><p>Ushio nodded again, and in an instant the world rippled.  A smooth wood surface filled Madoka’s field of view.</p><p>Madoka jerked upright in the real world, peeling her tear-stained face from the table.  “Homura!”  She looked at the purple gem on Homura’s hand, and sighed in relief when she saw that it had regained its color.  “You're okay,” she murmured, watching her friend's shoulders rise and fall in the rhythm of sleep.  “You’re okay now.  And—”  Madoka noticed a new face at the table.  “Hitomi?”</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em><br/>
Fire.  Smoke and soot.  Screaming.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Momo!  Where—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>”Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live—”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Dad's voice?  Flames everywhere, waves of heat, a lake of fire—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“—the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone—”</em>
</p><p><em>Screaming screaming crying screaming—</em> Momo!  <em>Have to find Momo.  Save her from the fire, get her out out out—</em></p><p>
  <em>“Fear not these flames, my child.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Raging sheets of flame screaming crying screaming dying but— new voice — whose?  Not Dad.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Let the inferno within overwhelm this meager spark.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Can’t do that!  Momo’s gonna burn!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“The wildfire of thy heart shall consume all those who stand against thee, yet jealously shall it guard thine own with its light.  Burn until thy life burns out, but the soul’s fire shall remain unquenchable.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What the hell—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Awake, child!  My time is not yet at hand.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What the fu—<br/>
</em>
</p><p>“Breathe, Sakura.”</p><p>Lights.  Not fire, calm lights, blue and orange and— eyes.  Calm eyes flecked in jade and amber.</p><p>That Doctor guy.  “Breathe.  In and out.  There we go.”</p><p>“Momo!  She was screaming.  But she’s—”  Kyōko's voice caught in her throat.</p><p>“It’s fine.  You’re fine now.  Follow my breathing.”</p><p>“I can still hear her.  But she- she’s just a memory, right?”</p><p>There was something old and sad in the Doctor’s eyes now.  “We’re all just memories.”  Was that supposed to be comforting?  It sure didn’t sound comforting.  But Kyōko’s heart no longer raged against her ribs, so she focused on his eyes.  Deep, old, sad eyes.</p><p>Kyōko saw something like herself in those eyes.  She saw what was missing, the jagged, gaping wound.  She gasped out between breaths, “Who?”</p><p>“Who what?”</p><p>“Who did you lose?  Who couldn’t you save?”</p><p>The Doctor made a face like he wanted to smile reassuringly but couldn’t remember how.  He gave up.</p><p>“So many,” he breathed, and the answer bore the weight of worlds.</p><p>“’M sorry,” Kyōko mumbled.  She was startled to find that she fully meant it.</p><p>“Don’t be; it’s not your fault.”  The Doctor finally managed that smile, weak as it was.  “Anyway, it’ll get better in time.  That’s how this sort of thing works, you know; it keeps hurting, but if you don’t stop living, as long as you treasure the good times and keep making new memories, then someday it gets to the point where you can bear it.  Someday the past won’t crush the air out of you any more.”</p><p>Kyōko pondered that for a breath.  “Do you ever go back and save them?  Does that work?”</p><p>“I keep trying,” the Doctor admitted, his eyes fixed on the floor near Kyōko’s feet, “but usually no, it mostly doesn’t work.”  He took a deep breath, leaned back, and when he spoke again, it sounded more like he was talking to himself.  “Eventually you have to let go.”</p><p>They sat there for a while, Kyōko on the leather seat, the Doctor facing her with his back to the console.  Slowly, agonizingly slowly despite her best efforts, Kyōko's breathing evened out.  The Doctor began to fidget, like he needed to stay still for the sake of the mood but simply couldn’t manage it for any extended period of time.  He averted his eyes.  Uh-oh.</p><p>“So, about your dream.”</p><p>“Do we have to talk about this?”</p><p>“Of course not,” the Doctor backpedaled, “but I thought it might help.  It seemed intense, so intense I could taste it.”</p><p>Kyōko stared at him as his eyes returned to her.  Seriously?  “You can taste dreams?”  His expression seemed absolutely honest, but that sounded too crazy to be real.  Then again, the same could be said of the Doctor as a whole.</p><p>“Well,” the Doctor amended, “it’s not literally taste, but I have a sense for psychic phenomena.  Especially strong emotions in psychically active people, you might say spiritually strong people, tend to burst out like little solar flares.  It’s not exactly like anything you get from the conventional five senses that humans tend to use; lots of people compare it to sight and sound, like seeing auras or getting a telepathic message, and that's not really right at all but it’s often the best one can manage.  In this case the active component was most like taste.”</p><p>A choked laugh filled the console room.  Kyōko noticed in a detached sort of way that the laughter was coming from her own throat.  “So what did my dream taste like?”</p><p>With barely a second’s consideration, the Doctor answered, “Burnt apple pie.”</p><p>Kyōko went with the first reply that entered her mind: “You’re shitting me.”  It rang true, though.  It made too much sense.</p><p>“I most certainly am not.”  The Doctor led with a sort of glower, but it melted into something melancholy.  “I won’t push you, but it really does help to talk about these things.  It’s not good to shoulder everything on your own; it’ll fester.”</p><p>Kyōko scoffed and waved a hand, echoing the Doctor’s typical expressive gestures.  “I’ll pour out my heart after you do.”</p><p>“Fair enough.”</p><p>The conversation ended there, and the pair was wrapped in the background hum of the TARDIS.  Gradually the tension evaporated, until Kyōko and the Doctor sat in some approximation of companionable silence.</p><p>Actually, Kyōko realized, it was a bit too quiet.  “Where did Urahara and Homura go?”</p><p>The Doctor gestured vaguely at the floor.  “They’re somewhere down there.  I think they’re trying to place a phone call.”</p><p>“Isn’t this place a phone box?”</p><p>“Well…”</p>
<hr/><p>“Okay, I’ve disconnected the phone on the outside and wired the sensor array into my Soul Phone.  What does the dilation gauge say?”</p><p>“Twelve hundred seconds per second.  But we <em>can</em> hold a signal for the time being.  Could we record a message and play it back at point zero eight three three percent speed?”</p><p>“That would work, as long as we don’t need to maintain a back-and-forth conversation.  That means Mayuri’s out of the question since he’ll just ignore us if he can’t argue, and all of Honshu is still out of range…”</p><p>“Decide quickly.  Coherence is dropping.”</p><p>“No no no—”</p><p>“I can probably suppress the rotor’s emission signature to lower the interference and get another lock, but we will need to dissipate the—”</p><p>“Can you or can’t you?”</p><p>“… I can, but it would probably not be wise.”</p><p>“Just do it.”</p><p>“I will say ‘I told you so’.”</p><p>“What’s that supposed to—”</p>
<hr/><p>A loud boom echoed through the console room, coming from seemingly everywhere at once.  Kyōko fell out of her chair.  She definitely did not cry out.</p><p>“I’ve been trying to stabilize transdimensional calls for years,” the Doctor remarked, wholly unperturbed as acrid yellow smoke wafted out of the gaps in the floor.  “This is about how it usually goes.”</p><p>Kyōko glanced about.  “Is this safe?” she asked, putting as much skepticism into her words as she could.  She could no longer see the far side of the room.</p><p>The Doctor flipped a switch, and with a whir of hidden fans, the smoke cleared.  “It hasn’t killed me yet.”</p><p>“They’re not you.  Do they have any idea what they’re doing?”</p><p>“I very much doubt it.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hint, hint: these are not quite OCs.  Like I said, I am not subtle.</p><p>Also, the “kana” in “Kaname” means “deer” so Madoka has deer in her inner world.  Again, not subtle.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Unfulfilling Prophecies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My characters do not obey me.  I have made peace with this.  But certain plot points are still happening despite their best efforts.  It’s not like this story was going to be character-driven or anything, nope.</p><p>Oh right.  Last time in my opening note I made it sound like AO3 readers are less awesome/encouraging/insane than the folks on the Discord.  While that might be true insofar as you lot do seem a bit saner, I want to assure you that you are not second-class readers.  You'll get the omake chapters early.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I told you so.”</p><p>Kisuke did not want to dignify Akemi’s admonition with a response.  He was gradually getting a feel for the inner workings of this TARDIS, but it appeared he would have to defer to his companion’s seemingly intuitive expertise.  This was obviously of critical importance, but it sure did rankle his pride as a scientist to let anyone show up his analysis and reason with gut instinct.</p><p>Certainly not honest enough to say as much but also unable to quite hold his peace, he asked, “Well then, what would you suggest?”</p><p>Akemi brushed her hair over her shoulder and leveled a very judgmental stare in Kisuke’s direction.  “I would suggest that you hold your tongue, hold this cable, and let me work.”  Without waiting for a response, she thrust a thick coaxial cable with some kind of heavy gravitational sheathing (or something?) into his hand.</p><p>“Fair enough,” Kisuke conceded with an inward grimace.  He could probably learn by watching, even if he’d prefer the hands-on approach.  Well, maybe <em>hands on something else</em>, he amended silently as the cable trembled and heated up in his fingers.  He schooled his expression, used his ankle to push aside what looked like a vinyl hose which was also beginning to vibrate, and tried to find a silver lining.</p><p>At least the smoke was gone.  There.  Focus on the positive.</p><p>Akemi transformed for a moment to pull a flat-head screwdriver, a set of alligator clips, and a roll of flex tape from her shield, then wrapped a bundle of wires around the cable she’d handed to Kisuke.  “Hold these there,” she indicated with a small gesture.  He complied, and she taped the whole twisted bunch together.  Then she took the screwdriver to his phone.</p><p>“Please be careful with that,” Kisuke urged, trying to sound like he wasn’t pleading.  In response, Akemi popped the back off of the Soul Phone and began to yank wires.</p><p>He had to ask, “You do know I only had the one of those on me?”</p><p>“I am aware.”  Akemi began to strip wires with her fingernails.  Kisuke wanted to cry.</p><p>He did not cry, mostly on principle.  He constrained his flinches and winces to the eyebrows up, banking heavily on the shadow from his hat and Akemi’s concentration on her task to preserve his dignity.</p><p>Akemi gathered a few seemingly random loose ends from Kisuke’s bundle and spliced them into the phone.  The alligator clips connected the electronic mess to a small bank of capacitors from the wristwatch Kisuke had dismantled — when did she pick that up?</p><p>“Please pass me the sonic,” Akemi prompted.</p><p>“My hands are full.”  Kisuke shook the coaxial cable and its unreasonably heavy toupee of wires.</p><p>“You can put those down now.”</p><p>With a miffed sigh, Kisuke set the mess on the floor and pressed what the Doctor had called a sonic device into Akemi’s waiting hand.  She waved it over the phone as a wizard might wield a magic wand, and it emitted a low, inscrutable buzz.  Akemi hummed and moved the device to the capacitors; once more, it trilled in a manner that meant nothing to Kisuke’s ears.  At this point he had only the faintest of guesses as to what she was doing, and little could rub him the wrong way like standing around idle, ignorant, and functionally furniture.</p><p>Actually, why bother guessing?  “What are you doing?”</p><p>“Improvising.”  The trill rose in pitch; Akemi tilted her head slightly, then nodded in apparent satisfaction.</p><p>“That’s reassuring.”  Kisuke wondered at how closely his response mirrored others’ reactions to his own poorly explained activities.</p><p>Yet, despite himself, Kisuke was… almost proud?  No, he realized, not <em>almost</em>.  He was properly elated that this Akemi, Soul King only knew how many timelines removed, would willingly invite an unfamiliar situation and <em>improvise</em>.  She was a far cry from the girl he’d met weeks ago, the creature of habit locked into a spiral of stagnant certainty, and he wanted to believe he’d had some part in her growth.  When had he become so invested?</p><p>Akemi shrugged, then powered on the phone and returned it to its owner.  One of the wires produced an alarming flurry of sparks, but the smoke didn’t return and Akemi seemed unconcerned.  “Done.  The time dilation is now seven to one, and the signal will not resolve until we send something.  When we open it, the transmission window will be small, so we should compose a text.”</p><p>“But we still can’t contact Mitakihara or Karakura?”</p><p>“Correct.”</p><p>Kisuke started drafting a text to one of his less frequently used contacts, then paused and handed back the phone, earning a questioning look in response.  “Young people are supposed to be better at typing on these,” he answered the unspoken query.  That and he wanted to be able to keep watching Akemi, which he definitely wouldn’t say aloud.  “You write and I’ll dictate.”</p><p>Akemi resumed her judgmental stare for about a second.  “I will have edits and additional information.”</p><p>“I’d expect no less.”</p><p>With a curt nod, Akemi acquiesced.  “Begin.”</p><p>Kisuke did, but his attention was elsewhere.  His descriptions of technical findings from his tinkering came without conscious effort, leaving him free to examine the mystery of this particular Akemi Homura.  She neither questioned his explanations nor consulted him for minor changes or additions, but typed with altogether too much confidence.  That was what he kept coming back to, what grabbed Kisuke’s focus time and again: the self-assured posture, the lack of hesitation, the deft and unrepentant bastardization of technology.  It shouldn’t have been strange; Akemi generally acted confident.  But usually Kisuke could tell it was an act.</p><p>Now he wasn’t so sure.  Where was the scared, young girl that he saw deep within his version of Akemi?  That had to be buried somewhere in this future Akemi, at least if her initial interaction with Sakura meant anything.  But that could just as well have been a mask as the aura of confidence.</p><p>And— how had Sakura reacted to his interactions with the Doctor?  ‘Now we have two of Urahara.’  Kisuke knew he perpetually rubbed Akemi the wrong way, had expected a flinch or resignation, or at worst that usual telltale blankness.  But no, her shoulders had relaxed slightly.  Her eyes had almost rolled like one might expect after a bad joke.  Did Kisuke detect <em>sass</em> beneath that unruffled exterior?  Had he, in another timeline, established a more amicable relationship with the wayward time traveller?  Or was this a mask as well?</p><p>Kisuke noticed that Akemi had begun to stare at him impatiently; he belatedly realized that he had at some point stopped dictating, leaving his hand poised mid-gesture.  He gave his best apologetic grin and tried to pick up where he’d left off, reassured by Akemi's satisfied huff that he hadn’t made too great a fool of himself this time around.</p><p>Benihime gave a low laugh.  <em>Did you really think you had unraveled the mystery of Akemi?</em></p><p><em>Well, not really,</em> he conceded.  But now Kisuke felt like he’d never even begun.</p>
<hr/><p>Nemu was guiding a hapless programmer when her phone buzzed.  She had a text.</p><p>This was unexpected because no one ever texted Nemu.  Sometimes Father would call, but if they were both in the lab compound then he would usually use an intercom or just shout.  He was across the room and had not called her name; therefore this was someone else.  A text implied extraordinary circumstances.</p><p>With a nod from Father, who was visibly too busy to take immediate interest, Nemu stepped out into the hall.  She was glad she did once she saw the contact name.</p><p>Urahara Kisuke.  On the one hand, when all officers involved in the magical girl problem were briefed on the new situation, Father had at least managed to pretend to be inconvenienced by his former captain’s disappearance.  On the other hand, Nemu did not trust him to rein in his leftover unyielding rage if he so much as saw the man's name right about now.  It would therefore fall to Nemu to interpret and paraphrase whatever information the text contained into a format that wouldn’t give Father an aneurysm.</p><p>One text could not raise too many issues.</p><p>Somehow it did.  The text was an anomaly.  Nemu skimmed through a message that could have passed for a thorough after-action report if only the tone were a little more professional, extracted the relevant information, and returned to Father’s side.</p><p>“Captain, I have received a report from the missing assets in Mitakihara.”  It was imperative that she avoid direct mention of Twelfth Division’s previous captain.</p><p>The current captain stopped micromanaging his engineers to ask, “Why did they contact you before me?”</p><p>“They have been experiencing connection problems.”  This was true but did not, in fact, answer the question.</p><p>Father gritted his teeth, but did not press the issue.  “It can’t have been a simple social call, then.  Report.”</p><p>“Yes sir.  The assets have acquired a means of arbitrary-access non-branching time travel—”</p><p>“Impossible!” Father spat on an unfortunate coder’s head.  “That blond buffoon could never create such a masterpiece!”</p><p>“Correct: he did not.  The time vessel used was acquired from an outside source.”</p><p>Father's eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.  “<em>Who?</em>”</p><p>Noted: exercise caution.  “That remains unclear.”</p><p>A tense silence arose.  Father seemed not to notice that everyone in the room had stopped working to witness the drama.  The moment he realized he had nothing substantial to throw at Nemu’s face was obvious on his; he scowled and took a steadying breath.  “What is clear, then?” he grit out.</p><p>The silence reestablished itself for approximately 0.74 seconds, along with the weight of Father’s reiatsu, enough to send at least a shiver down everyone’s spines but his and Nemu’s.  The latter heard the door open behind her, followed by a muttered “well, shit,” and then the owner of the voice — the cadence and timbre matched Akon, though verification by reiatsu signature was impossible at the moment — eased the door shut.  Nemu did not have to turn to know he had not stepped into the room, and it was a testament to Father’s truly singleminded frustration that he did not snap at his third seat.  This was concerning.</p><p>Before any other interruptions could occur, Nemu outlined the gist of the report.  “The time vessel presents technologies far beyond anything Soul Society has at its disposal, and is reportedly extraterrestrial in origin.  We will receive samples of these technologies for study as soon as an appropriate insertion point into the timestream can be found.  There is evidence that the originator of the Soul Gem system is currently located in Mitakihara—”</p><p>Father’s reiatsu swelled to levels rarely exerted out of combat.  The interruption was inevitable, and heading it off would be dangerous, <em>worthless</em>—</p><p>Nemu did not flinch when Father spoke.  “How has this escaped our notice?  Is our entire division incompetent?”</p><p>“The reported ‘Incubator Master’ is disguised as an ordinary human and is functionally indistinguishable from the general population.”</p><p>“Compile detection recommendations alongside the report, starting with public records analysis.  Is there anything else?”</p><p>“The planned insertion point should be between four and six weeks ago.  Changes may cascade up the timestream.”</p><p>“There will be inconsistencies, then.  Scour all records and communications from the past six weeks.  Anything <em>else</em>?”</p><p>“No sir.  All other information is incidental.”</p><p>Too slowly, Father’s reiatsu began to abate.  His consistently high stress level was worrisome.  (Note: examine risk factors for coronary failure.)  “Prepare the full report immediately.”  He glanced around.  “Back to work, imbeciles!”</p><p>The sound of fingers on keyboards resumed with a collective “Yes sir!”</p><p>Nemu left the room with more urgency than was strictly necessary.  As she walked, she forwarded the text message to High Spirits.  She could not withhold this information from trustworthy allies, Father’s grudge notwithstanding.</p>
<hr/><p>Sayaka had no idea what to tell Hitomi.  Because on the one hand, she was a friend, right?  She’d gone so far out of her way to make sure Sayaka was okay, so surely she deserved some sort of explanation.  But on the other hand…</p><p>Could Sayaka drag her friend into this?  Sayaka, who so far had contributed little more than two toilet bowls’ worth of barf to the fight?  She hated to admit it, but until she could fight for herself, Sayaka was along for the ride at best and a burden at worst.  If she brought Hitomi into this, she might make herself a… what?  A burden squared?</p><p>On the <em>other</em> other hand, Hitomi had shown she was willing to pull strings with her dad, just to find Sayaka.  Heck, she’d actually found High Spirits.  That was dedication.  Hitomi probably wouldn’t just decide, ‘Oh, Sayaka’s surrounded by a bunch of weird strangers, she’s fine’ and go home.</p><p>And.</p><p>And Sayaka felt a bit dirty thinking it for some reason, but if Hitomi was… useful… then that meant that Sayaka was useful because she was the reason Hitomi was here.</p><p>As she guided Hitomi to an empty seat, Sayaka mentally slapped herself.  This line of thought felt like a slippery slope toward Urahara-ness.  She should explain the situation, the basics at least, because Hitomi was being a good friend who deserved for Sayaka to be a good friend back.</p><p>She would just wait for Hitomi to ask first.  Yeah.</p><p>Hitomi asked a different question.  “Are they okay?”</p><p>Sayaka followed her friend's gesture — she didn’t point, Hitomi was brought up too well to point — and remembered that there was a crisis going on.  Madoka and Homura still had their faces mashed against the table, fingers intertwined, and if not for the faint movement of their shoulders Sayaka wouldn’t have been able to tell they were breathing.</p><p>She met Hitomi’s wide eyes and opened her mouth to say yes, but the word felt like a filthy lie.  The anguish from earlier still floated in the air.  Misery so intense that it hung and clung like cobwebs— how could the source of that feeling be okay?</p><p>In the end, Sayaka didn't have to answer.  Madoka’s head lifted from the table and she cried out, “Homura!”  She peered desperately at the magical girl’s Soul Gem, then exhaled in relief.  “You’re okay now.  You’re okay.  And— Hitomi?”</p><p>Madoka blinked hard, like she’d only just realized the world around her existed.  Nobody spoke, and several people eyed the girl warily, like she might turn into a lit firework at any moment.</p><p>Sayaka didn‘t care.  She rushed around the table, nearly tripping over a chair that somebody had failed to push in, and smothered Madoka in a hug.  After a moment, Hitomi stood, pushed in her chair like a responsible person, and came around to lay a comforting hand on Madoka’s shoulder.</p><p>Even in this new context, Sayaka found that she still wasn't totally sure what she should say, but what came out was, “Geez, don’t scare us like that!”  Hitomi, outside of Madoka’s line of sight, raised an eyebrow.</p><p>Madoka shrank slightly, but rebounded right away.  “I’m fine now, everything’s fine, so don’t worry!”  She flashed a shaky grin, and Sayaka breathed a sigh of relief.  She hadn’t meant to lay blame, but her words really did make it sound like her worry was Madoka’s fault, and Sayaka was glad her friend didn’t seem hurt.</p><p>Her train of thought paused for a moment.  For a while now, Sayaka had been thinking much more directly about other people’s feelings.  When had it started?  Before she had almost drowned in the emotions that swamped this room, surely.  Before the dissection gone wrong, even before the explosion.  It almost seemed to have started when she’d felt Hitsugaya and Kyōko going at it.  The change wasn’t unwelcome, not really, but it was weird.</p><p>Then Madoka spoke again, and Sayaka wrenched her attention back to the present.  “Hitomi, when did you get here?”</p><p>Hitomi smiled softly.  “When I found out that Sayaka ran away, I went looking for her to make sure she was safe.  I’m glad I found her so quickly, and I’m glad you’re here too.  It seems you’ve both been having a hard time?”  The way she pitched her voice upward at the end was as much a question about what happened as Hitomi was likely to ask.</p><p>Sayaka really, <em>really</em> didn’t want to explain why she’d run away.  She didn't know if she <em>could</em> explain the whole magical war thing.  It was probably (definitely) her responsibility to explain <em>something</em> to her friend who had come looking for her specifically, but Sayaka’s traitor eyes cast about the room for help.  Her gaze landed on Hitsugaya, who had at some point ended up right next to her like a ninja.  Or was she just really unaware of her surroundings?  Now that she thought about it, Sayaka felt drained, like the fear and anxiety had finally started to run out… oh right, she had a question to answer.</p><p>“Yeah, uh,” she started, but Hitsugaya interrupted her with a teal-jade glare.</p><p>His breath whispered in her ear, “How much do you trust her?”  Judging by the slight blush that lit up Hitomi’s cheeks, she hadn’t heard what he’d said and was connecting a different set of dots.</p><p>“She’s my friend,” Sayaka whispered fiercely back.</p><p>Hitsugaya looked very sad as he broke eye contact.  “Friends can still hurt you.  How much do you trust her?”</p><p>“I—”  Sayaka wondered where her words had gone.  She <em>did</em> trust Hitomi, but they’d never shared anything like the secrets that surrounded this shop.  Stuff like crushes, little things their parents did that bugged them, yeah they’d talked about that; Sayaka knew Hitomi could keep those secrets.  But the stakes were so much higher now.  She might feel like a bad friend for doubting Hitomi, but her conscience couldn’t be more important than actual lives that were at stake.  Right?</p><p>What could she say?</p><p>Sayaka swallowed the lump in her throat.</p><p>“I’m having… issues.  Homura, Madoka, and some family friends are sheltering here for now.  Because of Asunaro.  We want to try to figure out what happened in case it happens here.  Can I tell her that?”  To her own ears, it sounded like Sayaka was begging.  She hated that sound.  Hitsugaya's eyebrows ran together in thought, and her breath hitched.  She hated that sound too, hated the idea that she might not be able to get <em>permission</em> to tell her friend the bare minimum of what was going on, but if he said no then she just might not have the energy to—</p><p>“Fine.”  The one word snapped her out of her desperate thoughts.  Her neck got straighter, like she’d gotten rid of something in her head that had been weighing it down.</p><p>Sayaka turned back to Hitomi, who was still waiting patiently, politely as always.  “I ran away.  I ran away because my parents— they took—”  She took a shaky breath.  Why was this so hard?  Why couldn’t she do this?</p><p>Hitomi’s eyes were wide.  Madoka gently grasped Sayaka's arm.</p><p>Half of Sayaka wanted to lean into the touch, to take hold of the comfort that Madoka so freely offered and never let go.  But the other half got angry.  Angry at Mom and Dad and their insensitivity, their stupid insistence that other people's thoughts were so much more important than their own daughter’s.  Angry at stupid, weak, <em>useless</em> Sayaka who couldn’t fight, couldn’t help, couldn’t even finish the least explanation her friend deserved.</p><p>The anger was cold and dark, like the despair that had filled the room just minutes ago, like a riptide threatening to pull Sayaka under.  But if she drowned in it, she’d keep being useless.  So she gripped it, dragged it under like she was the ocean and it was just driftwood, and she made the anger hers.  She had no idea what that even meant, no idea what she was doing, but it got her tongue untied.</p><p>“I swore I would never go to another performance until Kyōsuke recovered,” Sayaka started anew.  “My <em>parents</em>,” she bit out, and the word was acid on her tongue, “forced me to break that promise and go to a symphony for Dad’s <em>career advancement</em>.  Like some kind of pawn, like I don’t have feelings that matter.”  Hitomi's eyes went even wider and she opened her mouth to say something, but the words kept tumbling off of Sayaka’s tongue.</p><p>“This is right after they chewed me out for putting my friends above my family, for causing them problems by hanging out with people guilty of the <em>terrible</em> crime of not having parents like I do.  They made me go, and I couldn’t take it and I ran.  And when they called and asked me where I was, they just wanted to know because I was making them look bad!”</p><p>She slammed a fist against her leg as she paused for breath.  Hitomi’s mouth was still open, but now moisture beaded in her eyes.  Sayaka noticed that her own cheeks were wet.</p><p>Hitomi slowly closed her jaw, then cupped Sayaka’s face in her hand.</p><p>“Sayaka, listen to me.”  Hitomi’s voice was gentle, but it carried steel.  “I know exactly what it means to be used as a chess piece.  It doesn’t get easier, and what your parents said about your friends is unacceptable, but you can’t fix anything by getting mad and running away.  You have friends; let us help you.  You can talk to us, and we can help you talk to them.”</p><p>“You’re family to me,” Madoka chimed in.  “So you’re not really putting your friends before your family.”</p><p>Hitomi conjured a handkerchief from somewhere within her sleepwear and dabbed at Sayaka’s cheeks, ignoring her own tears completely.  “I feel the same way.  You can tell me anything.”</p><p>Sayaka felt some of the tension evaporate, and the anger that was holding her together wasn't enough any more.  Her lip trembled.  Hitomi noticed.</p><p>“Oh my,” she exclaimed, making a show of looking around the room.  “This is quite a crowd.  Have I intruded on a sleepover?”</p><p>A flicker of a smile found its way onto Sayaka’s lips as she prepared the rest of her explanation.  The change of subject was glaringly obvious, but that didn’t mean she appreciated it any less.</p><p>Hitomi was a good friend.  Maybe not tonight, Sayaka decided, but eventually she would give her the full story.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I’ve been struggling with Nemu’s voice more than I expected.  I think she has a much more complete suite of emotions than she really lets on, and a lot of what I believe goes on in her head is based on about twelve frames of anime and a few pages of the TYBW arc that I don't have on me.  Plus I’ve been thinking about how much an artificial soul has to hew to normal human emotional development, especially given Nemu appears to have internalised a virtue ethics system which directly conflicts with Mayuri’s values.  It makes me wonder how much awareness of the unhealthy Kurotsuchi family dynamic I should include.</p><p>Seriously, I would have skipped her point of view entirely if not for my plans later.</p><p>On the whole PoV topic, I’ve been going through some of the previous chapters, and I found that my perspective changes don’t read as easily as I remembered.  I’m thinking of keeping each future chapter focused on a single group of characters, with at most two points of view, which would require some outline shuffling but could possibly produce a smoother reading experience.  Any suggestions?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Any Sufficiently Advanced Magic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The Doctor is a fount of, uh… well.  He puts the “fiction” in “science fiction” with a passion.  I’m tempted to add a “pseudo” in there somewhere, but it honestly seems redundant at this point.  Whatever it is, it’s fun to write.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“It’s quite odd,” the Doctor mused, “that people think time is always prior.”</p><p>He spoke softly, using the same tone he’d maintained when he was chatting with Sakura, grounding her, but he timed this comment for the listening pleasure of a specific someone else.</p><p>“What do you mean?” asked Akemi, who was just emerging from beneath a floor panel.  The Doctor wondered whether she’d been successful in her telephone adventures, but that could wait; right now he was fishing for information.</p><p>“Take entropy for instance,” he elaborated, and Akemi’s twitch wasn’t lost on him.  “Entire civilisations cut themselves off from time travel because they assume that entropy always increases as a function of time, and they bake that assumption into their definitions.  But it’s really the other way around: the arrow of time is an emergent property, always pointing in the direction of disorder.  Once you know that, you can wibble time into nearly any shape you want by wobbling entropy just so.”</p><p>Akemi stopped most of the way out of the floor and stared at the Doctor like he’d suddenly turned purple.  Sakura sniggered at Urahara, who had to find another way up now that his intended point of egress looked to remain obstructed for the foreseeable future.  The Doctor decided he was having fun.</p><p>He held out one hand in a twisting motion and continued, “Really, folks have got the whole notion of causality inside out.  Most so-called ‘time paradoxes’ are essentially misunderstandings of where cause and effect come from.  Causality and locality are just the universe trying to not get too twisted up in one place, not hard-and-fast laws of physics.”  He studied Akemi’s expression carefully; she had the visage of one who kept adding two and two together and getting lithium.  “Honestly, people who keep trying to stave off or escape the heat death of the universe have the wrong idea entirely — they’re trying to yank the rug out from under time.”</p><p>As the Doctor watched Akemi try to socket this into her worldview, Urahara popped out another floor panel and rose from the shadows below like the eldritch abomination he probably was.  Sakura made a vaguely disappointed sound.</p><p>Delightful and aggravating by turns, or more typically all at once, Akemi confused the Doctor substantially.  She knew more than she should as an Earthling from the twenty-first century, as evidenced by her ability to pilot the TARDIS.  Based on her response to his ramblings on the nature of time, she also knew too little to be, in any conventional sense, someone who could pilot the TARDIS.  Perhaps she had some mutated temporal sense, related to her assumedly modified state.  Or maybe she had figured out how to interface with the TARDIS on a psychic level… oh, there was an idea.  Maybe the next console revision could include a psychic interface?  That might be a useful point of comparison, at least.</p><p>Of course, the Doctor could simply ask, but he was under absolutely no illusions that Akemi would be forthcoming.  Anyhow, the thrill of the metaphorical hunt was wonderfully diverting, so he’d like to keep working at it on his own terms.</p><p>Without preamble, Sakura asked Akemi, “How do you know how to pilot this thing?”  She might as well be trying to ruin the Doctor’s fun.</p><p>Fortunately for the continued existence of the challenge, Akemi deadpanned, “Magic.”  Sakura snorted.</p><p>As Akemi went to read a dial, Urahara followed up the line of questioning.  “Does magic solve the field equations too?”  He looked rather proud of himself, probably for something he’d figured out while poking around.</p><p>Akemi looked at him oddly.  “What field equations?”</p><p>“The ones to determine which way we’re facing in time?”  Urahara seemed to reach the slowly dawning realisation that they might not be experiencing the TARDIS the same way.  As a seat-of-the-pants pilot, the Doctor could sympathise.</p><p>“Are we not discussing magic?” Akemi asked.  “It is naturally intuitive, to the point that such calculations are unnecessary.”</p><p>“Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology,” Urahara quipped.  It almost sounded like he was quoting…</p><p>“Arthur C. Clarke?” the Doctor asked idly.</p><p>The fan came out again.  “Munroe, actually,” Urahara answered.</p><p>“What the who?” Sakura interjected.  “No seriously, what are any of you even saying?”</p><p>Before anyone could catch her up, a loud <em>clunk</em> echoed about the TARDIS.  The floor trembled and the time rotor wheezed in a most worrying manner.</p><p>Or, as Sakura astutely put it, “That doesn’t sound good.”</p><p>The Doctor and Akemi rushed about the console, an impromptu dance of concentrated chaos.  Switches were flipped and dials thrown with a bizarre, frenzied synchronicity, to the point that the TARDIS seemed less under the control of two pilots working in concert and more under the hand of a single distributed entity.  An unexpected thrill of elation suffused the Doctor's hearts, a transcendent exultation of mind and body as he danced with his <em>equal</em>, as together they soothed his beloved timeship’s sickly gasps.  Urahara’s fascination, Sakura’s bemused concern, the Doctor’s own sorrows and obsessions— all else faded away in lieu of a mounting joy he’d believed to be centuries dead and buried.</p><p>His dance partner stopped dead in front of the hanging monitor.  When the Doctor glimpsed the screen's contents, that joy faded as well.</p><p>
  <em>Not again.</em>
</p><p>“Something has… ripped over a hundred years out of someone’s timeline,” Akemi deduced from the readings, and almost before the Doctor reached the same conclusion, she continued, “Is that a Weeping Angel?”</p><p>“Yes.”  The Doctor nodded absently, his mind so many worlds and millennia away, flitting across the years in search of any recourse and turning up empty.  “Yes, it’s a Weeping Angel.”</p><p>
  <em>Not again.</em>
</p><p>Akemi turned to Urahara.  “That disruption originated near your shop.”</p><p>Almost imperceptibly, the man paled.  He peered at the screen, clearly unable to make heads or tails of what he saw but trying his damnedest.</p><p>(Two gravestones with familiar names) <em>Not again.</em></p><p>“One of those monsters is at the shop?” Sakura asked sharply.</p><p>“This should not be,” blurted Akemi.</p><p>(The empty space where a friend stood just a moment ago) <em>Not again.</em></p><p>Urahara glanced between her and the monitor.  “This isn’t how it happened for you?”</p><p>(Sulking, wallowing, no answer in sight) <em>Not again.</em></p><p>“No.  This is new.”</p><p>(Grasping desperately for a solution, hope dying) <em>Not again.</em></p><p>(Can't find an insertion point, can't go back for them, can't smile and tell them it's okay, not this time) <em>Not again.</em></p><p>
  <em>Not again.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Not again.  Not again.  Not again, not again not again not <strong>again NOT</strong>—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Never again.</em>
</p><p>Standing straighter than he had in what felt like decades, the Doctor tapped a finger to the screen.  “The distortion in time is still relatively minor since it’s only one Weeping Angel.  One endpoint is a hotbed of temporal activity, yes, but the other one is about a hundred and twenty years removed from that, give or take a decade.  On that end, spacetime should be more than smooth enough for us to land.”  He threw three levers with one gesture and took a deep breath.</p><p>
  <em>Never again.</em>
</p><p>“This could be beneficial,” Akemi continued, picking up the thread of hope and running with it.  “We might be able to follow the line of disruption back to our time if we activate it with some kind of resonance.  If we have a version of me at each end, I may be able to copy what the Doctor did to get here.”</p><p>A genuine grin cracked the Doctor's face.  “Someone’s been paying attention!”</p><p>“Is that possible?” Urahara mused, probably more to himself than to anyone else.  It seemed unlikely that he expected an answer.</p><p>Not that that ever stopped the Doctor.  “Absolutely!  Theoretically, at least.  In practice, it’ll be much more difficult than how I got back to the TARDIS since we’re relying on a living person being able to do something that my precision equipment could barely manage, and besides, your time in Mitakihara is just that much of a mess.  But with a decent crew like we have here, we can absolutely do this.  We’re doing this.”</p><p>“Crew?” Sakura piped up.  “You’re expecting <em>us</em> to help pilot this thing?”  She threw an appraising glance at Urahara, who looked thoughtful but still very much out of his depth, then glanced at her own shoes.  “Maybe it slipped your mind, but <em>some</em> of us have no idea what we’re doing,” she finished in a more subdued tone.</p><p>“Then now is a good time to get some practice,” the Doctor declared.  “This is the easy bit, so let’s go.  Pull that second lever and then hit the red button.”  He pivoted on his heel to face Urahara as Sakura complied, ignoring whatever she said in response.  “Start counting up from eight and turn that crank two hundred and ten degrees anticlockwise every prime-numbered second that has a three in it, starting <em>now</em>.  If it sticks, there’s a mallet you can use to whack it beneath the panel.”  Urahara turned the crank at thirteen.</p><p>“Now what?”  Right, Sakura was done with her task.  The Doctor realised that, although this was technically how a TARDIS was meant to be operated, he had very little experience in handing off control.  The last time he’d done this had been with novices as well, yes, but at least he’d worked with them before.  Now he wasn’t quite sure what his companions could do, so he just stood frozen on the spot for altogether too long.</p><p>Fortunately, Akemi came to his rescue, thrusting a strand of TARDIS artron energy — ‘reiraku’, Urahara had called it — into Sakura’s hands.  “Do you see this?”</p><p>“… No.”  Sakura looked lost.</p><p>Akemi huffed.  “Do you feel it?”</p><p>“Sort of?  What is it?”</p><p>“A control interface.  Focus on the feeling of it in your hand.”</p><p>The ribbon hummed as Sakura did so; her eyes widened.  “What the fuck, that wasn’t there before.”</p><p>“When it hums like that, push some magic into it and press a key on the typewriter, whichever key you think of first.”</p><p>“Really?  Just pump magic into the mysterious vanishing ribbon and push a random button?”</p><p>“More or less.”</p><p>Magic.  The Doctor would really have to figure out what these people meant by terms like that, but not now.  He palmed his sonic screwdriver and fine-tuned the helmic regulator as Sakura resigned herself to stimulus-response piloting and half-comprehension flickered across Urahara’s face.  Akemi got back to switching switches and monitoring the monitor.</p><p>“All ready?” the Doctor called out.  Met with general affirmatives all around, he grasped the handbrake and <em>yanked</em>.</p><p>“Geronimo.”</p><p>And they were off.</p>
<hr/><p>Isshin had no idea what happened.  One moment he was trying to figure out what made a spiritual predator’s body tick; the next moment he was up to his knees in a brackish marsh, with no reiatsu signatures within ten kilometers of him.</p><p>Scratch that: there was exactly one reiatsu signature within ten kilometers, and getting closer.  It was tantalizingly familiar, too, but… it was impossible.</p><p>Kaien was <em>dead</em>.</p><p>“Who goes th— Uncle Isshin?  What are you doing here?”</p><p>Kaien was also, very suddenly, <em>right there</em>, peering suspiciously at Isshin from a safe thirty or so centimeters above the marsh water.</p><p>With all the determination he could muster, Isshin fought the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes.  He actually won that fight.  So, of course, he was completely blindsided when his body decided to lunge forward and catch his inexplicably-not-dead nephew in a bone-crushing hug.</p><p>Apparently, Kaien was equally blindsided.  “Seriously, what?  Is the paperwork that bad?”</p><p>Slowly, as he took in the question, Isshin released Kaien from his embrace.  The latter took a dramatic breath and muttered something about suffocation.</p><p>“What paperwork?”  Isshin’s brain was still having a hard time catching up to the situation.  He probably sounded like an idiot.</p><p>“All the junk you have to approve as the clan head?”  Fortunately for what little dignity Isshin possessed, Kaien seemed just as confused.  “Last I checked there was a stack on your desk that was taller than I am.”</p><p>
  <em>Dignity, I hardly knew ye!</em>
</p><p>Isshin ran the preceding events, as far as he understood them, back and forth through his mind.  Forward, backward, sideways and upside down, it made no sense.  How had he gotten here?  How was a dead man standing before him, asking about his responsibilities as the head of a clan he hadn’t even seen in decades?</p><p>A seemingly unrelated thought popped into his head unbidden.  Wasn’t the whole Mitakihara area wetlands less than a hundred years ago?</p><p>Oh…</p><p>“Kaien,” he said very seriously, “what year is it?”</p><p>Kaien blinked and tilted his head a bit.  <em>Damn</em> he looked young.  He'd <em>died</em> so young.  Isshin tried to keep his thoughts off his face and let Kaien answer.</p><p>“Uh, Meiji 25.”</p><p>Meiji 25.  1892.  It seemed that Isshin had somehow been transported back in time.  So, as the melodramatic goofball his kids knew so well (would know in a little over a century’s time), he grasped his nephew by the shoulders and loudly announced, “I have come from the future.”</p><p>Kaien stared at him for a long moment.  “That’s not funny.”</p><p>Right.  No wonder Homura didn’t lead with that.</p><p>But Kaien looked him up and down all the same, and Isshin knew that recent events had aged him beyond his years.  He had new wrinkles, his hairline had receded by a few millimeters, and okay, Kaien probably wouldn’t notice that second thing.  But the point was that Kaien knew him.  He wasn’t starting from a blank slate like Homura had over her many timelines.</p><p>He looked his nephew dead in the eyes.  “I’m serious, Kaien.  It’s been so long, but…”  He struggled to keep his composure.  This wasn’t just about Kaien.  Using his future knowledge, he could stop Aizen before he really got started.  He could save everyone so much grief.  He could…</p><p>He could accidentally prevent his family from ever existing, couldn’t he.</p><p>Isshin snapped back to the present (past?) when Kaien shifted uncomfortably.  He was still maintaining eye contact, though, waiting for Isshin to continue.  He rushed to do so, to assure Kaien that this wasn’t some sort of joke.</p><p>“Ask me anything.  What would I only know if I were from the future?”</p><p>Then Isshin turned his question over in his head and wanted to smack himself.  Not just because of the desperation in his voice, but because the words he’d spoken sounded a little bit more insane than usual.  Why would Kaien know what Isshin didn’t know but would later?  And why was this so complicated?</p><p>Thank the Soul King that Kaien was used to Isshin being an utter dork, because he gave it his best shot.  “What do I get you on the next anniversary of your captaincy?”</p><p>“Do you even have a plan for that?”  Isshin didn’t bother to hide his doubt; Kaien’s choices in gifts were almost exclusively last-minute decisions.</p><p>True to form, Kaien shrugged.  “I was hoping you would give me an idea.”  Isshin realized just how much he’d missed that unrepentant, shit-eating grin.</p><p>“You get me a poetry collection from the World of the Living.”  Isshin placed his forehead in his palm.  “It’s awful, but my son would probably love it.”</p><p>Kaien gaped in an honestly sort of insulting way.  “You have a kid?  <em>You</em>?”</p><p>“What’s that supposed to mean?”  Isshin glared with less heat than he'd have liked.</p><p>“No offense, but uh, you’re exactly the worst person to raise a kid.  Hell, you basically <em>are</em> a child.  How did this even happen?”  Looking thoughtful and amused by turns, Kaien paused and examined Isshin again.  He seemed to enjoy watching his uncle flail and splutter, but what else was new?  “No, seriously, who even got you to settle down long enough to make another whole person?”</p><p>“You wouldn’t know her.”  Isshin figured he could let the extraordinarily blunt barbs slide, since it seemed that his nephew had at least suspended his disbelief for the time being.  He spent a few seconds just enjoying Kaien’s presence in light of that fact.</p><p>“Tell me about her,” Kaien urged, snapping Isshin out of his reverie.</p><p>Where to start…  Staring off into the far distance, Isshin nearly lost himself in his memories.  This was happening an awful lot lately.  Was it something to do with time travel, or was he just sleep-deprived?  He forced himself to focus, anchoring his attention to the present, um, past?  To the here and now.  He anchored his attention to the here and now by gazing wistfully at half a dozen fishermen near the edge of his awareness and thinking of simpler times—  <em>Dammit!</em></p><p>“Masaki was the kindest, strongest, and funniest woman I ever met,” he began, finally extracting himself from the marsh as he spoke.  “She acted all gentle and polite, but I swear she had a talent for mischief that would make Kūkaku jealous.  One day she had this huge poster made, double-sided with my face on one side and hers on the other.  I thought it was weird, but beyond that I didn’t really think about it too much.  Then I found out she’d written in her will that if she died before me, she wanted me to put up the poster with her face showing and pretend it was my idea.”</p><p>“Holy crap.”  Kaien laughed aloud for a few seconds before a realization struck him upside the head.  “So she’s, uh…”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>They stared solemnly in the direction of one another’s feet for a while.</p><p>Kaien broke the silence.  “So did you do it?”</p><p>“The poster?  Yeah.”  Isshin’s heart twinged, the wound as fresh as the day it was made, but he found it in him to chuckle a little.  “Someday my kids will probably tell <em>their</em> kids about how crazy old Grandpa had this giant picture of Grandma printed to keep him company once she was gone.  Masaki’s prank is going to outlive us all, you mark my words.”</p><p>The quiet that settled over the marsh was more comfortable this time, two Shibas just enjoying one another’s company with no roughhousing or explosions in sight.  It felt so strange to bask in this sort of calm, especially after so long on high alert, after so much tragedy and heartbreak.  Pleasantly strange, though.  Isshin cast his senses about, determined to soak up every bit of this blessed moment of peace between crises.</p><p>If he had been paying any less attention, he would have missed the moment one of the fishermen disappeared.</p><p>“Shit,” declared Isshin.  Crisis detected; so much for the moment of peace.  He flashed off in the direction of the remaining five humans, leaving Kaien in the dust.</p><p>Encumbered as he was by his gigai, his lead didn’t last long.  “What's wrong?” the younger Shiba asked.</p><p>“There were six fishermen a moment ago.  Now there’s five—” and another one vanished.  They were close enough now that Isshin felt an exceptionally faint swell of Hollow-like reiatsu.  “Four now.  I think it’s a Witch.”</p><p>“A what now?”</p><p>“Something we’ve been dealing with in the future.  There’s a spiritual predator that can induce a form of Hollowfication in living souls and produce these things called Witches.”</p><p>“Shit,” agreed Kaien.  “What are we dealing with?”</p><p>“If there’s a white rabbit-cat with a hatch on its back, that’s an Incubator.  It’s the predator.  If you notice one, pretend you don’t.”  Isshin ignored Kaien’s incredulous expression.  “As for the Witch, it hides in a pocket dimension and feeds on the humans it pulls in.  The whole thing screams ‘drug trip,’ but don't worry, Mayuri didn’t slip you anything weird.”</p><p>“Gotcha.”  Kaien’s voice dripped with doubt, but as they arrived at the little fishing boat that was the site of the disappearances, he followed Isshin’s lead in knocking out the remaining fishermen.</p><p>Isshin anchored the boat, then arranged the four unconscious fishermen as comfortably as he could across its deck.  He located a sigil on one man’s neck, a circle with inward-pointing triangles and a nasty-looking fishhook.  A quick tap of Engetsu’s hilt dispelled the sigil with a sound like shattering glass; observing this, Kaien imitated the process on another man with his Zanpakutō, Nejibana.</p><p>As they repeated the process, cleansing the final occupants of the boat, a grating screech spread over the marshland.  Kaien took a defensive stance and looked about, his eyes sweeping right past the blue box that materialized on a nearby patch of solid ground; rather, his gaze settled on something just above the boat's prow.  On the other hand, Isshin examined the blue box warily, recognizing it from the security video.</p><p>The box finished fading into existence with a thump.</p><p>From there, everything happened at once.  The box’s doors swung open as Kaien prodded a shimmer in the air with the point of his blade.  Sakura burst forth and declared, “Come with me if you want to live,” at the exact moment that a now-familiar sigil swallowed Kaien.</p><p>Isshin flicked his gaze between the box and the labyrinth entrance and swallowed heavily.  “Give me a minute,” he decided, and darted after his wayward nephew.</p>
<hr/><p>One Incubator terminal registered the presence of a TARDIS, with a form factor and chronal signature matching that of a known threat, in the immediate vicinity of a labyrinth.  The probability that the Doctor had become aware of Witches exceeded acceptable parameters.</p><p>Without delay, the Incubator notified its master.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The Munroe referenced is Randall Munroe, the xkcd guy.  Because Urahara seems like the sort of person who reads xkcd religiously.  On a related note, this was the second chapter I planned in any amount of detail, starting with the title and quote.</p><p>Also, ecs05norway mentioned that maybe psychic energy should be artron energy a few chapters ago, and I very cryptically said that's something different.  I hope the differences will start to become apparent soon, but if it still doesn’t make sense six or seven chapters from now, I guess I’ll put an explanation in the notes or something.  For now, just consider artron energy to be a specific type of energy, while psychic energy is a broader category.</p><p>Also.  I don’t remember Isshin’s relationship to the rest of the Shiba clan, but I do remember that Kaien, Kūkaku, and Ganju have an uncle, so I figured that could be Isshin.  This is fine…  I never thought I’d say this, but I’m too tired to do research *hides compiler specifications*.</p><p>Also!  (Lots of notes this time around, huh.)  I’m expediting some plot points for pacing reasons, and also because if I don’t, my characters will have too many opportunities to derail everything and produce an excessively happy ending.  This is still a PMMM crossover; there’s only so much happy we can have in the end, and I stand by the conclusion I have planned even if I have to kill off extra characters to make it work.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Type Advantage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My first actual OC in this story is a Witch.  Seems legit.  I also gave Kaien a new ult because I had too much fun with this.  Anyway, fight scenes ahoy!  No, I don’t know how to write fight scenes.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’d been warned, but Kaien had to blink and shield his face as a surge of energy plucked him from the pleasant morning over the Mitaki estuary system and plunged him into… whatever the hell this was.</p><p>At first blush it was a typhoon over the high seas, plain and simple, but Kaien had a feeling this would be anything but simple.  The waves rose too high and steep for any reasonable storm, the horizon — though nearly indiscernible through the gloom and squall — looked at least thirty degrees askew, and the lightning arced in kaleidoscopic vortices of every hue imaginable.</p><p>And then there were the fish.</p><p>Isshin popped into existence a stone's throw away and yelped, “Are those piranhas?”  He did a downright comical double-take.  “Or flying fish?  Or— heads up, they’re coming this way!”</p><p>The fish were indeed inbound.  Dozens of horse-size<strong>d</strong>, unreasonably toothy fish with long, frantically flapping pect<strong>o</strong>ral fins and all-white eyes.</p><p>“You see the humans?”</p><p>Isshin nodded toward a waterspout that contained two tumbling fishermen and one very determined piranha.  “I’ll handle that.  You get the fun bit.”</p><p>“Great,” Kaien groaned.  “Surge, water and heavens… Nejibana!”</p><p>As the blade took the form of a trident, Kaien grinned despite himself.  His Zanpakutō spirit called out to the moisture, and the rain and sea sang with her.  She commandeered the nearest storm surge and turned Kaien’s simple thrust into a hammer of water that bowled through the piranha swarm.</p><p>A vast swath of fish crumpled like soaked paper.  More than water was their element, it was Kaien’s, and at high speed it hit harder than granite.</p><p>The fish rained from the heavens, eyes bulging from the pressure on their insides— eyes b<strong>r</strong>eaking, <em>hatching</em> into flurr<strong>i</strong>es of tentacles armed with razor-<strong>s</strong>harp teeth—</p><p>“Oh <em>fuck</em> no!”  An unfamiliar reiatsu, a redheaded young girl with a blazing segmented spear, and the tentacles receded into the seascape after their scaly sources, flailing but defanged.  The flames guttered in the heavy downpour, then bloomed gamely to match the flush of disgust and determination of the girl’s face.  To the side, those few fish Kaien had missed were introduced to a series of sizeable explosions.  He took stock; another, raven-haired girl appeared to have conjured and distributed armloads of bombs in the blink of an eye.</p><p>Whoever these kids were, Kaien liked their style.</p><p>“Kisuke!” Isshin exclaimed.  Sure enough, the recently-instated captain of Twelfth Division appeared in the twister to snag one of the fishermen; Isshin passed the other into his arms.  “Explain later; for now, keep them safe.”</p><p>“Have fun,” Captain Urahara crowed, pausing to snatch his hat out of the air and jam it back onto his head.  Now that Kaien paid closer attention, he noticed that Urahara was dressed in casual clothes.  They didn’t suit him.</p><p>Kaien hollered over the storm, “Actually, an explanation sounds really nice right about now!  What are these things?”</p><p>“Familiars,” the ravenette bomber uttered from near his elbo<em>what the crap, when did she even move?!</em>  “They serve a tortured soul known as a Witch.”</p><p>“Yeah, Uncle Isshin explained Witches at least,” Kaien muttered absently.  “We were a bit pressed for time, though.”</p><p>The girl gave Kaien’s uncle a pointed stare.  “<em>Uncle</em> Isshin?”</p><p>“I guess introductions are in order.”</p><p>“Do it later,” the redhead growled, waving her spear at a fresh wave of piranhas.  “We have freaky sashimi to slice.”</p><p>Since blunt force hadn’t worked out so well as the aforementioned slicing, Kaien changed strategies.  A series of sweeping slashes from Nejibana’s bladed end sent razor-thin sheets of water through the schooling swarm, neatly bisecting several fish with each swing.  The tentacles that erupted from the cut piranhas’ eyes were near stillborn, much less menacing than those crushed from the bodies of the first wave.  Sure, they were still immensely disturbing, but those cursed appendages didn’t concern Kaien nearly as much as the fact that the fish <em>just kept coming</em>.</p><p>When the crest of a wave crashed about his ankles, he tugged on the water to the limits of his awareness to assess the situation.  And oh, that was bad.</p><p>“There’s more of them down there,” he announced.  “Lots more.”</p><p>“How many?” Isshin asked between swings of his blade.  His shikai, fearsome though it was, struggled to cut through the storm for any significant distance, so the elder Shiba was mired in close combat.</p><p>“Lots,” repeated Kaien.  He sensed a deep, swirling column of fish rising to the surface all around them and braced against the oncoming surge of scales and teeth.  “Too many to count, but I think there’s got to be at least ten thousand.”</p><p>Isshin frowned.  “This is going to take days.  We need to go for the Witch.”</p><p>“We’ll have to get to her first,” the redhead snorted.  “How much do you want to bet she’s in the middle of the teeth typhoon?”</p><p>“I’d bet Kisuke’s hat,” Isshin decided, not dignifying the pout beneath said hat with a response.  “That’s going to be trouble for the two of us.  Homura, do you have anything that works well in the water?”</p><p>The now-named Homura pulled a huge tapered cylinder with fins from a buckler on her arm, however that worked.  The thing was half again as long as she was tall.  “I have a depth charge.”</p><p>“Why do you—”  The redhead paused in thought, even as she shredded a pair of fish that tried to get the jump on her.  “You know what, never mind.  Just do your thing.”</p><p>Homura deftly did… something, Kaien couldn’t tell what.  With a resigned frown, she dropped the thing into the waves.</p><p>The redhead peered at the turbulent water with mild concern.  “Should we get some distance or what?”</p><p>“Unlike in media portrayals, depth charges are ineffective if they are deployed near enough to the surface to cause a large steam burst.  Their destructive shockwaves come from the rebounding expansion and contraction of the gas bubble produced by the explosion, and this only occurs if the detonation is at great depth.  The surface will rise slightly, but the bubble will largely dissipate so the burst will not affect us.”</p><p>“You know a lot about explosives,” Kaien remarked with a measure of approval.  Homura shrugged, watching him mow down more familiars.  She sniped familiars’ eyes with pinpoint precision, but kept staring at Kaien.  He was honestly getting a bit uncomfortable.</p><p>A small bomb exploded one of the piranhas from within, clipping one of its fellows’ sides and sending it yawing back into the waves.  This Homura kid was really efficient.</p><p>The sea rose with a rush of waters.  The pressure change made Kaien’s ears pop.  He blinked and commented, “Wow.”  What else was he supposed to say?</p><p>“The familiars will keep coming for a little while,” Homura noted, punctuating the statement with staccato gunfire.  The weapon was unlike anything Kaien had ever seen, but at this point he didn’t have any surprise left in him.</p><p>“But the ones on the bottom are already coming belly-up,” he added, probing the depths with his reiatsu.  “What <em>was</em> that thing?”  He gestured toward the spot where the cylinder had vanished beneath the surf.</p><p>“That was a Mk-101 Lulu, an American boosted fission charge with a yield of eleven kilotons,” Homura said with a note of pride.</p><p>Kaien didn’t break eye contact as he slew another squadron of familiars.  “The future is terrifying.”</p><p>“How did you even get your hands on that?” the redhead wondered with poorly concealed awe.</p><p>Homura’s lips tugged upward at the corners.  “Very carefully.”</p><p>“You said that was nuclear,” Isshin clarified.  “Do we have to worry about radiation when the bubble pops?”</p><p>“We’ll be fine,” Urahara insisted from above.</p><p>Isshin hurled half a fish in his direction.  “Easy for you to say, all the way over there.”</p><p>“Well, you’re free to join me whenever you please.”</p><p>The entire group migrated upward a few dozen meters.  Below, the sea fizzled and split, finally releasing the explosion-heated steam.  With it, a layer of fish floated into view, tossed limply about on the waves.  Their eye tentacles wove a veritable carpet of pulverized flesh.</p><p>“So much for water types being strong against fire,” remarked the redhead.  As if in reply, the entire sea rose with a roar.</p><p>And then, directly beneath Urahara, the surface opened into an enormous whirlpool.  The sucking wind threatened to drag the entire group down into the abyssal depths, but the limp forms in the shopkeeper’s arms seemed especially affected, looking more like banners in a tornado than human bodies.  A guttural screech rattled the skies.</p><p>Kaien winced, at both the sound and the sudden surge of captain-level reiatsu.  “You wouldn’t happen to have any more of those Lulu things by any chance?”  He gauged the Witch as it ascended the vortex below, and was disconcerted to find that he could actually feel it in his bones.  It felt a bit like his skeleton was being squeezed in place, which was a sensation he’d only ever felt when he’d incurred Captain Unohana’s ire.</p><p>Homura shook her head; her hair whipped in the wind but somehow remained flawlessly smooth and untangled.</p><p>“You used your only nuke on the mooks?”  The redhead appeared personally offended by this decision.  She eyed the shadowy form that had become visible deep within the whirlpool even as she bisected more fish.</p><p>“I doubt we need a nuclear weapon to deal with that,” Homura replied, casually dismissing the palpable presence.  “You might call it an area clear rather than a bossing move.”  Kaien felt inclined to agree with the decision to take out as many fish as possible in one go; while they weren’t anything close to a threat individually, they would have made for an unbearable battle of attrition.  He did not agree with whatever language Homura seemed to be speaking, because while the words sounded an awful lot like Japanese if taken one at a time, they sure didn’t make sense together.</p><p>“She knows gamer lingo,” the redhead gasped in Kaien’s general direction.  “I’m so proud.”</p><p>“I have no idea what either of you is talking about,” Kaien informed her.</p><p>“Focus, ladies,” Urahara interjected.  “The boss is upon us.”  He adjusted his grip on the unconscious fishermen, who probably had whiplash judging by how their heads lolled about in the wind.</p><p>And the storm shattered.</p>
<hr/><p>On the deck of the fishing boat just outside the labyrinth, the Doctor tended to his garden of sensors.  His head snapped up from his work a moment before a small but meaningful surge of energy erupted from the rift, sending the instruments into a flurry of activity.  Something in the labyrinth had shifted.</p><p>A quick pass of the sonic screwdriver had the Doctor pacing the boat, restraining himself from jumping headlong into the labyrinth through nothing but sheer force of will.  “I have no idea what that means,” he muttered to nobody in particular.  “Very exciting, that.”</p><p>He peered at the faint sigil that marked the labyrinth’s entrance, then patted a whirring tripod-mounted antenna in what might have been a comforting manner were the device animate.</p><p>“And probably very bad.”</p>
<hr/><p>Loath though she was to admit it, Kyōko was out of her element.</p><p>Not just in the sense that the wind and water seemed determined to douse her flames, though that was really annoying.  The whole standing-on-air thing just wasn’t something she usually did.  Sure she had some sort of instinctive grasp of it, but what she usually did amounted to jumping around, off of either air solidified with magic or conveniently located bits of terrain, and she usually preferred the latter — it was surer footing at any rate.  But in this labyrinth there was no terrain to speak of, and now that the waves of familiars were beginning to subside, hopping in place would probably look stupid.</p><p>If Urahara and Homura could do it, so could she.</p><p>So, when the technicolor lightning decided to literally split the heavens above, and the fragmented clouds shifted kaleidoscopically with an apocalyptic <em>boom</em>, Kyōko felt she could be excused for falling a good meter and a half toward the Witch below.  Of course, anyone who might claim she squeaked like a startled kitten was undoubtedly in league with Urahara and thus inherently untrustworthy.</p><p>Speaking of Urahara and the Witch…</p><p>The wind tugged ever harder at the guys in Urahara’s hands, funneled down the maw of a terrifying coloss<strong>u</strong>s — the Witch was at least forty meters tall.  Her lower body looked like that of an Edo-pe<strong>r</strong>iod noblewoman, though the kimono was torn and so faded that its original color was impossible to determine; water rushed up and down her slender legs, hoisting her aloft amidst the maelstrom.  From the wai<strong>s</strong>t up, though, was the form of an enormous mottled octopus, inverted in a grotesque parody of a human torso.  Its too many razor-tipped tentacles lashed the air and its beak snapped madly, occasionally cutting off the wind with massive shockwav<strong>e</strong>s that shifted the pieces of the sky like a mad sliding puzzle.</p><p>The black-garbed stranger Kyōko had been mostly ignoring up to this point glanced between the other two adults.  “So what’s the plan?”</p><p>Urahara made a show of hefting his burdens.  “Don’t look at me; my hands are full.”</p><p>“Since when has that ever stopped you from telling people what to do?” Kyōko asked, half rhetorically.  The man had been awfully quiet lately, which she was already recognizing as an objectively bad sign.  Then again, any future plots he hatched were future Kyōko’s problem; for now, she might as well be grateful he wasn’t saying anything clever.  “No, you know what, I’ll take it.”</p><p>The Witch screeched and swung a tentac<strong>l</strong>e through the group, scattering them and serving as an excellent reminder that they still needed a course of action.  Something told Kyōko that bum-rushing this thing was a bad idea.</p><p>“I do have an attack that should be able to finish this in one shot,” the stranger announced after a moment’s consideration.  “The only downside is that I’ll need you all to distract the Witch.”</p><p>Kyōko shrugged.  “That doesn’t sound too bad—”</p><p>“For five minutes.”</p><p>“Sounds like a great Plan B.”</p><p>The stranger mirrored Kyōko's shrug.  “Now you know why I asked what’s the plan.”</p><p>The tugging, sucking wind ceased with a crash.  Then the Witch, clearly tired of being excluded from the conversation, spewed a stream of air and water directly at Kyōko’s face.  With a slightly undignified “oh shit,” she darted out of the blast’s path.</p><p>Turning her octopus torso, the Witch swept the stream through the sky.  After a second or two, it became evident that Urahara was the new target.</p><p>“You want these, do you?” he called out, hefting the still unconscious men in his arms and grinning.  He moved fast, invisibly so, and appeared right behind the stranger.  The stream followed.</p><p>The stranger (Kyōko was really going to have to learn his name eventually, or at least come up with a nickname) spun his trident spear thing and gathered the water around him in a huge wheel of spray.  Around the point the Witch figured out that nothing was going to happen and cut off the stream, the guy rounded on Urahara.  “What was that?”  He seemed to think he asked it calmly, but his eyelid twitched and a vein throbbed visibly on his forehead.</p><p>“That was my vote in favor of Plan B,” Urahara answered with a wry grin at the whirling water.  “Simple, effective, not a lot of moving parts to fail.”</p><p>Yeah, right.  He was planning something else, to gather intel or buy time or <em>something</em>.  With a bit of luck, whatever plot he had in the works would take a while to come to fruition; with a <em>lot</em> of luck, Kyōko could use that time to avoid the fallout.</p><p>Dr. Kurosaki frowned as the suction started up again.  “We can come up with a Plan A while we buy time; if we don’t have any better ideas five minutes from now, we’ll work with what we do have.  Kaien, prepare your attack.”  Oh, so that was his name.</p><p>“Way ahead of you,” Kaien pointed out with a nod to his still-spinning water wheel.  By now the trident was a blur in his hands, and the water accelerated to match its pace.  The whole setup fed on the rain and surf, sucking in more moisture than seemed entirely necessary, and this was supposed to go on for five minutes.</p><p>Kyōko decided that this wasn’t the best time to call Urahara out on his bullshit; she moved to guard Kaien while he continued to charge what looked like a truly epic finisher.  And not a moment too soon: the Witch, noticing Kaien’s flaring magical presence and identifying him as the salient threat, sent three bladed tentacles his way in a pincer attack.  Kyōko barely blocked two of the lightning-quick strikes, digging her heels into the air to avoid being launched out of the battle completely.  Beside her, Dr. Kurosaki sliced several meters off the end of the third tentacle with his magic-looking burning sword.  Homura was opportunistically lobbing pipe bombs down the Witch’s throat.</p><p>They could do this.</p><p>One of the few remaining familiars threw itself at the back of Kaien’s head at the exact moment Kyōko entertained the slightest vision of success.  Dr. Kurosaki started to shout a warning, but too late, there was nothing anyone could—</p><p>Homura was there, <em>right there</em>, toting an already spinning rotary cannon and braced bodily in preparation for its immense kickback.  Kyōko was no firearms expert, but she was reasonably confident that this weapon was meant to be mounted onto some sort of solid object; the sheer momentum of the spray of bullets, which couldn’t have lasted more than a second and a half, was enough to deflect the familiar.  Its tattered remains sailed past Homura’s icy glare and missed Kaien by a good arm's length.</p><p>For whatever reason (that could be sussed out later), Homura looked especially cross with this particular familiar.  She nodded in reply to Kaien’s distracted “Uh, thanks,” and returned in the blink of an eye to her previous vantage point, from which she resumed her rain of high explosives.</p><p><em>This is fine,</em> Kyōko told herself as another flurry of the Witch’s seemingly endless appendages lashed toward Kaien.  She deflected what she could, shattered a few of the weird tentacle blades for good measure, and resolutely ignored the rapid dimming of her Soul Gem.  Worry about that later.</p><p>Her magic wavered under the next crushing assault, a pair of tentacles that attempted to smack her into the sea.  They came closer to succeeding than Kyōko would like to admit; she tried very hard to ignore her inability to swim.  All she had to do was not fall in.</p><p>She ignored the fact that Urahara wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t doing anything — he did have his hands full, after all.  Unless and until he had any bright ideas to share, he could basically be ignored for the purposes of this fight.</p><p>A tentacle wrapped around her waist and tried to toss her aside like a waterlogged old newspaper; as she cut herself free and narrowly avoided careening into Homura’s line of fire, she ignored everything but the battle at hand.</p><p>Never mind the gust and gale, never mind the pelting rain that endeavored to extinguish her flame.  Combat was Kyōko's element, and she was in the thick of it.  Pivot left, overarm slash, extend on the downswing, look out below.  Sidestep, parry right, retract and lunge, leap and spin.  Match the rhythm of the fight to the beat of her heart, the pace of each maneuver to the breath in her lungs.  Live in the moment, or it could be the last moment of her life.</p><p>Dimly she noticed the cuts, the bruises, the little injuries that found her through her personal storm of violence.  Nothing that affected her ability to fight, so she ignored them too.  One strike, one block, one step at a time, and the frenzy of cephalopod flesh began to abate.</p><p>Block, deflect, fall back a step, lunge and sever.  Seriously, octopuses (octopi?) weren’t supposed to have this many tentacles, right?  Then again, Witch logic.  So too was this line of thought surrendered to battle.</p><p>Slash, front flip, strafe left, drop and leap.  How much longer?  Surely five minutes had come and gone — but even time itself was lost to the deadly dance.</p><p>At some point, Homura switched to an anti-materiel rifle and began sniping for the Witch's eyes.  A direct hit, and the resulting screech regrettably snapped Kyōko out of her battle mode.  She surveyed the combat zone, took in the remaining tentacles in their panicked flailing, did a double-take at the size of Kaien’s hydro-buzzsaw, and concluded that they were still working with Plan B.</p><p>The sky shattered again, but the pieces didn’t do their mad shuffle like before, and the wind stopped completely.  What rain was in the air gave up its horizontal momentum in an instant and fell straight down, with no new drops to replace it.  The tentacles fell limp.</p><p>Kaien coughed politely into the silence.  “So,” he began, eyeing Homura with uncertainty, “did you finish it?”</p><p>The Witch promptly inverted herself, the huge maimed octopus now supporting a pair of upraised legs, with damp cloth clinging to the corpse-pale skin.  A roar, halfway between a scream of rage and the rushing of many waters, sounded from the depths of her kimono.  Then, with the sound of something tearing, hundreds of familiars poured forth from the same location.  Kyōko found the implications more than a little disturbing, and very carefully did not look for where the fish came from.</p><p>“You had to ask, didn’t you?” Dr. Kurosaki groaned.</p><p>Kyōko commiserated with, “That’s exactly what you say to trigger the next stage of a multi-stage boss.  Good going.”</p><p>Looking equal parts sheepish and confused, Kaien conspicuously focused on his whirling mass of water, which by this point had reached a good ten or so meters across and positively hummed with power.</p><p>“Is that thing ready yet?” Kyōko demanded as the new wave of giant piranhas approached killing range.  “Because I think I hate these things with a literally burning passion.”  She stabbed one familiar and roasted it from the inside out, then pummeled another with its smoldering body.</p><p>With a knitted brow, Kaien shook his head.  “Not quite.  I need to reach a certain power density for a sure kill, and that takes time to pull off.”</p><p>“Seriously?  Why do you even have an attack that takes this long?” wondered Kyōko, even as she scrutinized her weirdly effective, if unsightly, charred familiar kebob slash bludgeon.  “It seems awfully situational.”</p><p>Kaien grinned through his concentration and all too cheerfully announced, “It’s for showing off.”</p><p>“It’s for—”  Kyōko choked on her response and decided to change the subject.  “Why do you think she brought the swarm back?”  She swung her spear in a combination of emphasis and a futile attempt to dislodge the smoking familiar corpse.  The gesture accomplished much more toward the former objective than toward the latter.</p><p>Fortunately for her sanity, the conversation shifted seamlessly.  Homura, who had switched back to the rotary cannon, looked contemplative.  “That is a very good question.  Compared to the Witch, the familiars are harmless.”</p><p>The impaled familiar chose this moment to reveal that it wasn’t just smoking from the attack that killed it.  With a hiss, it erupted in a blinding blue flare.  The explosion took out a good sixty centimeters of spear.</p><p>“Fuck,” Kyōko muttered as her slagged spearhead fell toward the sea.  “Holy fuck,” she revised as she considered how heat-resistant her spear was.</p><p>So now what?</p><p>“This is new,” Kaien remarked.  Dr. Kurosaki grumbled something about how “they just had to say something, again.”  Kyōko just stared at her spear in mounting horror as familiars lit in a rainbow of fire all around them.</p><p>Dodge, roll right, weave back, deflect— the balance was wrong, the reach was too short, and teeth lodged themselves deep into her left shoulder.  Shit.  She beat the giant fish with desperation-fuelled swipes of the back end of her spear.  The familiar came loose with a horribly wet wrenching sound, and Kyōko cried out as its explosion, mere meters away, assaulted the open wound with piss-yellow fire.</p><p>It would heal.  Looked like hell and hurt twice as bad, all crumpled bone and blackened muscle where a hamburger’s worth of flesh used to be, plus third-degree burns down the entire arm, but the fight wasn’t over.  She just needed to finish it one-handed and with the pointy half of her weapon missing.  No time to worry about it.  No problem.</p><p>Her Soul Gem was probably dangerously dark by now, from more than the fight, but she couldn’t spare the time to check.  Couldn’t spare the magic for a new spear— <em>shouldn’t</em>, not <em>couldn’t</em>, because it wasn’t gone the way Rosso Fantasma was, but she could feel the Witch inside her growing stronger with every shred of magic she used and Kyōko was already on thin fucking ice.  Might fall down into the water, down into the inky depths and drown in body and soul alike—</p><p>
  <em>“The flames within shall not falter at such a stumbling block as this.”</em>
</p><p>“What?”  Kyōko glanced around in search of the oddly nostalgic voice.</p><p>Hefting a fisherman in the crook of his arm, Urahara managed to hold his fan in front of his face.  Due to the awkward angle, it didn’t quite hide the note of scheming glee in his expression.  “What do you mean, ‘what’?”</p><p>Kyōko’s eyes narrowed.  “You did something, didn’t you?”</p><p>“I assure you I have no idea what you're talking about.”  The shopkeeper fluttered his fan in the shadiest way possible.</p><p>“You—”</p><p>“I’m ready!” Kaien interrupted.  “Everybody get clear!”</p><p>As Kyōko spun to witness the hydro-buzzsaw of death in action, she thought she caught sight of someone behind Urahara’s shoulder.  A regal, flickering figure with a head ablaze.  Her own head snapped back, but there was nothing to see.  Nothing but Urahara’s very punchable expression of smug satisfaction, now that he’d lowered his fan.  She would have punched him, too, had her sense for impending carnage not gone off right that moment.</p><p>The water wheel had gone from choppy and turbulent to glassy and razor-sharp.  In one smooth but laborious motion, Kaien twirled the spinning trident to the side, then overhead, dominating the great mass of his water through sheer force of will.  He made a wide flinging motion and roared with the crashing water.</p><p>“Mangetsu Kaishō!”</p><p>At the peak of the swing, layer upon layer of surging water slid free of the spinning trident.  Dozens of rings, each nearly half as wide across as their target was tall, flew forth in a swath of waiting destruction.  Any familiars unfortunate enough to get caught in their path were shredded on contact; those with a bit more distance skirred out of the way in a flight of mad desperation.</p><p>With a deafening crash, the rings impacted the Witch in rapid succession, like a volley from a massive machine gun if machine guns threw water jet discuses instead of bullets.  The first hit cut a vertical gash deep into the Witch and split the sea below as it did something that could be loosely, if very inadequately, described as a splash.  The second ring drove deeper, and the third completed the bisection.  The fourth hit at an angle, preparing the Witch to be quartered.  At the fifth impact, the entire spectacle was consumed by spray.</p><p>Around when the tenth impact rang out, Kyōko noticed that her jaw had fallen open.  She surreptitiously pushed it shut with one hand, absently hoping nobody noticed.</p><p>She turned again, eyeing Urahara with suspicion as the labyrinth faded.  He almost seemed to be pouting, but by the time she faced him fully, his features had returned to that perpetually amused mask of his.  It was enough to make Kyōko wonder whether she’d seen the first expression at all, or whether it had been a figment of her imagination.  What was he playing at?</p><p>Was it too late to punch his face in?</p><p>She discarded that notion in favor of snatching the Grief Seed out of the air and collapsing to the deck of the fishing boat below it.  That was <em>exhausting</em>.</p><p>“No, don’t lean on— too late,” the Doctor lamented as Kyōko tipped over a tripod-mounted something or other.  “Oh well, didn’t need that anyway.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This chapter was brought to you by involuntary software updates, Dragon Ball Z Abridged references, and the sensation of drowning, though not necessarily in that order.</p><p>So has anybody else noticed how gifted a fighter Kyōko is?  She uses a really difficult weapon in a visibly instinct-driven way, which is impressive on its own, but she doesn’t crutch on that innate battle sense; her positioning is usually fairly tactical and covers her openings against unexpected assailants.  She has better situation awareness than most of her peers (<em>cough Mami cough</em>), and her moveset is both powerful and versatile enough to take advantage of her above-average perception and reflexes without becoming predictable.  It’s not totally unrealistic combat proficiency or anything, but it’s really impressive for a teenager with no formal training, even taking magically enhanced instincts into account.</p><p>Also, she shares Piccolo’s birthday, which makes her objectively awesome.</p><p>By the way, going by how Getsuga Tenshō gets translated, Mangetsu Kaishō (満月海衝) means “Full Moon Sea-Piercer.”</p><p>WITCH DATA<br/>URSEL, the Tempest Witch with a suspicious nature.  She craves a gentle touch but fears all contact, pushing her prey away even as she draws it in, and the turbulence of that conflict tears all asunder.</p><p>Minion: Doris, whose duty is to retrieve.  They swarm thousands strong to feed their mistress, who cannot bear to grasp her meal in hand.</p>
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